“Transwomen are women”

"small sample sizes tend to find differences between groups because small sample sizes mean outliers have a strong influence on results."

YY to this - the last paper I looked at on the subect had about 30 samples, spread between men, women, transmen, transwomen. Massively affected by one outlier.

I'd add another to your list - poor quality control on the data. The same paper (supposedly drawing attention to a greater density of a certain type of cell in men than in women and transwomen) had two other outliers in the opposite direction, a woman and a transwoman with none of the relevant type of cell in that region of their brain (post-mortem samples). Now I'm not a biologist (work in a different part of science), but none at all in a supposedly important part of the brain for function? I'm thinking "error mounting your samples/ damage during the dissection process". (QC of data is a massive issue in the area of science I work in - huge numbers of papers on how to compare results from different measurement techniques, how to calibrate for the age of the instruments).

The main drivers behind the "male brains are different to female brains" are two men. Simon Baron-Cohen (e.g. www.theguardian.com/books/2003/may/17/featuresreviews.guardianreview6) and Steven Pinker (e.g. newrepublic.com/article/68044/sex-ed).

For the studies, with small samples sizes, who say they have found differences between male and female brains (post mortem), the following main problems exist:

• we're talking about samples at quite a gross scale of analysis, rather than a fine scale of analysis.
• small sample sizes tend to find differences between groups because small sample sizes mean outliers have a strong influence on results.
• p

I'm not sure I agree about drawing that distinction between transexual and transgender, Hermione.

For one, I can think of a particular transexual celebrity who recently was threatening and shouty and silencing to a group of women for misgendering him as any misogynistic man might be. And who holds some horrible sexist views about women. I'm cognisant that he falls into the 'look how committed I am to transition' category. And I definitely wouldn't want to be alone in a changing room with him especially if he knew my views on sex and gender.

And for two, even if transexual women were harmless as kittens, I'm still as uncomfortable being informed I'm the same as they are and must accept them in intimate female spaces.
I mean, I wouldn't strip naked in front of my harmless elderly dad, or brothers, or male friends I trust. For me the ultimate deciding factor isn't 'will you hurt me?'

It's 'are you my sex?'

There's so much more to male aggression and dominance than just penis. 95% of all men have a hand grip strength greater than any woman. That thought occurs to me often. Even the weakest men can out grip the strongest women.

We'll never bridge the physical chasm between the sexes. Yet too many women are running like lemmings off that cliff rather than admit there's a chasm right there.

Actually I think it’s worth remembering the difference noted earlier in between transsexual and transgender people.

I wouod love some more studies in the difference of behaviours between the transgender and the transsexual.
I suspect transsexual are much less of a ‘danger’ to women than transgender are. The length that they will have gone through (with the surgery for example) will make them fit in within ‘women’ much more likely and logical in some ways.

Transgender people in the other hand are more likely to be those who will still have a penis and will want to use it (sexually). I suspect they are also the ones who are the most vocal about it all (happy to be corrected though). These are the people I would have an issue to say they are ‘women’ because they will not share the biology, will still share the functioning sexual organs of men AND still behaved in the masculine gendered way (I am in a position of privilege and I will be listened to).

TBH, I dont understand WHY transwomen would want to be considered women. They would be putting their life at risk (eg health screenings) and will face very different challenges than women amongst other things.
It’s as if the recognition that a tranwoman is a woman is the ultimate recognition that they have acheived what they set out to achieve.
Except they dont agree on what the final aim is (See the transgender/transsexual Issue) and I’m not sure they can actually define themselves what it is they want to achieve.

Fekko
perfect

Oh I’m getting ‘you ain’t no sister, bruv’ printed on mine. I might add a photo of Dick Emery too.

Oh I’m getting ‘you ain’t no sister, bruv’ printed on mine. I might add a photo of Dick Emery too.

It's a fetish dressed up as a civil rights issue

Tempted to get this printed on a T shirt.

But but but - show me the sorcerers alchemy that can turn a man into a woman. And not a woman with a penis because that is not a woman.

And it's the fetishists who are driving this.

The desperation to breach women's boundaries and impose themselves as the most womanly woman ever is a massive sexual compulsion.

So why aren’t transwomen, well ‘transwomen’. That’s how it is in the real world.

No matter how long I keep my fingers crossed or hold my breath I won’t ever be chinese. Not going to happen. Ever.

The relentless repetition of the mantra transwomen are women just makes them look crazy.

Something they never seem to grasp.

On the GoFundMe page there are hundreds of posts saying 'Transwomen are women'. Presumably they all know why they think that? or at least one of them does?

Some of it seems to be 'They have a hard time and are therefore women'. I'm not sure where that leaves transmen (a subject somewhat closer to my heart).

I seriously don't get it either

Why are people just spouting transwomen are women and that's it shut up.

A transwoman is a transwoman. That is it.

A woman is a woman.
That is it.

They both have rights. They both have the right to safe living. But at the moment, one is being prioritised OVER the safety of the other and it needs to stop.

Women have fought for decades to get the rights we now have. It's sickening that we have to start again

Well thats bollocks as I personally know a couple where one is trans and they deffo have a 'full relationship '

Me too LangCleg

But I am always encouraged and heartened by the number of women who say they used to support it, as Libfems, but they no longer do.

They are always very humble about how the scales fell, and how they could have been so blind.

@Glitterypinksoap

I've sent you a PM.

to C Rose.

It fills me with impotent fury that MEN behave like this and some WOMEN stick up for them.

Glitterypinksoap

Thank you for putting that post from C Rose.

And you're quite right. Women wouldn't dream of persecuting other women because they felt excluded from their fucking illness.

Neither would most men.

Just this particular brand of raging, narcissistic, misogynistic bastards.

It's quite true that there is no such thing as peak trans. Because right when you thought it couldn't get any sicker, it does.

And they have the weight of our government behind them.

I've been on this planet for decades and, I have to say, I have never been prouder of being a woman.

A living, breathing, feminist woman.

And yes, it is exclusionary. Too bloody right it is.

Ffs.

It's appalling that women's support groups are being shut down to pander to a very tiny minority of the population

to C Rose.

You would never find women intentionally surfing the net, looking for other vulnerable women purely to shut them down and prevent them getting support because their existence is politically unsuited to your views.

Exactly Glittery Agree with you 100%.

TRAs ought to hang their heads in shame at this appalling hijacking of women's health issues; but they wont of course, why should they? Heaven forfend they are slighted in any way.

The feeling i get is that there is a minority who feed off the melodrama of ‘poor me, look at poor me! You’re not looking at me!!!’ And rather than focus on themselves as individuals (and get on with their day to day boring lives) see it as a whole group lifestyle thing that has to be played out in public.

Bullying, shouting down and aggression is part of this and, I have to say, a rather male attribute?

I read that thinking

You would never find women intentionally surfing the net, looking for other vulnerable women purely to shut them down and prevent them getting support because their existence is politically unsuited to your views.

You would never find women organising to prevent other women talking about issues that don't personally affect them. Women manage infertility as one massive example without trying to silence and prevent other women talking about children as 'too triggering' for them.

People who would do this are not 'women' and are making it clear they see no value of any kind in 'other women'. It's not a group they identify with and wish to join or support.

Glittery, that's beyond awful for that poor woman. To have a serious health condition, to be socially isolated as a result, and then to have men troll your only source of online support in a fit of narcissistic rage!