Why DO people 'believe' transwomen are women?

Because it’s supposedly PC , right on, cool, liberal thing to believe or kid yourself to believe, or say, to not risk being called transphobic.

Are you still female if you've had a hysterectomy?

I genuinely hate this argument. Women who have had hysterectomies are obviously still women. They are adult human females, regardless of which parts they have had removed for whatever reason.

And intersex does not prove there are more than 2 sexes. Intersex is always brought up in trans arguments but they are nothing to do with each other.

“I feel like an adult who has to ask for pocket money for every purchase.”

I wish you could “like” posts on here.....

Except that the rhetoric does sometimes care about the materiality of their body. I saw a link to a site in Facebook today from someone looking to get other people to pay for ‘gender confirming’ surgeries. So the anatomical and biological things do matter, but only when it suits the trans narrative.

Rufus, yes I agree.
Sex = anatomy
Gender = role (I don't much like that 'role' term either, what the hell is a woman's role or man's role?)

Seems to be a much clearly definition of the two these days as they're no longer synonymous. Getting quite worried that it'll soon be a problem to identify myself as 'me' ;-)

I feel like an adult who has to ask for pocket money for every purchase.

There's women's societal status summed up in a nutshell. And then men wonder why sometimes we seem a little peeved.

The main problem with losing rights is it took so long to get them in the first place, and it leaves us back where we started.
This does make it clear that rights are only on loan to us. We dont actually own them, other people do.

I feel like an adult who has to ask for pocket money for every purchase.

As an aside, I am startin*bto think we should drop the word “gender” altogether and just use “sex”

Yes i agree angry

The long term solution is for it to be OK for men not to be masculine and women not to be feminine. We're still going to have to deal with the mess we're in right now first though.

brilliant

I agree except for the 'gender' when for me its 'sex'

But apart from that i think i am pretty much in the same position

Some people will move heaven and earth to be what they want to be, and I admire and sympathise with them. It still doesn't make them what they want to be.

I can't imagine the anguish some people go through if they truly feel 'trapped' in the wrong body, or not the gender that science is telling them they are. It must be horrific for some, and at best tormenting for others.

I just don't agree that the rest of society can play along with the charade of someone changing gender in order to make it more realistic. I'd far rather society found a better way to accept transpeople and transpeople found a better way to accept certain limitations.

I might change my view in the future as I (and science) learn more, but for now, it's where I'm at.

cattenberg i've worked with not one but two trans women as well, in the insurance industry believe it or not. But neither of them was ever so vocal like the spokespeople are today. I wouldn't have ever presumed to know what they were thinking but I think you can know and like (or dislike) one colleague without being blind to the invasion and erosion of women's boundaries and places that is being made by their spokespeople and movement.

I assume that my colleague uses the ladies' toilets, and that doesn't bother me at all - why would it?

I'm afraid Cattenberg, I'm really going to have to leave you to it at that point. Good luck!

Hi Brilliant mistake

"Why can't being 'very feminine' be enough?
Can't living life as a woman within the contraints and limitations of reality be enough?"

For some people, hating their body is very real. I've met people who have had reassignment surgery and it's not something you'd go in for just for fun. My only concern is that a)they're consenting adults and b)they're not doing it under external pressure.

I'd really like to see a society, as I say, that was gender neutral. Not a popular view with some here it seems, but there you go. When we get to a point where a male person can wear a dress and make up and a female person can have cropped hair and wear a three piece trouser suit and no one turns a hair, then perhaps people may feel more comfortable with the bodies they're in and not want to alter them. We don't know because we've never been down that path. I think we currently live in a society in which gender stereotypes are being ever more closely enforced.

The concern currently being expressed - and I think it's very merited is that gender non conforming people, young women particularly, are being pressured into taking testosterone/puberty blockers (if under 16) or having mastectomy because being a trans man is more socially acceptable than being a butch woman.

I agree that's an authentic concern, and it's a very important debate. We have to protect young people from undue pressures. However I don't think that means we can say that no one should ever alter their body if they really want to.

Most of them dont make any surgical changes, mummybear701. And they dont have to to obtain a GRC.

No one believes 'trans women are women', but many people support it over womens right to say 'women are women'.

I haven't been on MN for very long, but I don't understand the MN obsession with transwomen.

I work with a transwoman, and I don't think about her transition very often. If I do, I think about how hard it must have been for her to feel that she was born in the wrong body and to have to undergo surgery to change it. Surgery that sadly isn't 100% effective. I don't envy my colleague at all - I'm grateful I was never in that situation.

I assume that my colleague uses the ladies' toilets, and that doesn't bother me at all - why would it?

Why do they go to such lengths to get rid of their male anatomy if they were still men at the end of it? Genitals, breasts, facial construction, all requiring hormone treatment before surgery and physical pain, on top of loss of certain family and friends. Then fighting the forces of beaurocracy to get recognised in their new sex. No-one would put themselves through this if they were not 100% certain it was the right thing for them. Some female born women will never agree, but can still show respect and sensitivity.

I'm not trying to trivialise this, just trying to understand why there needs to be more and more barriers broken down in order to make a trans feel more real.

There doesn't. Accepting that you can't always get what you want and other people won't always see you how you'd like them to is just one of those things about life that everyone has to accept sooner or later.

We're not doing trans people any favors in the long run by pretending otherwise, and a lot of other people are being harmed in the process.

Youve always seemed a very positive and optimistic poster angry

I admire that about you

(Sigh) And I was so hopeful too.

And no one said that either

Maybe its two different threads

I doubt it angry

I can remember a time (partly because of social attitudes then, and partly because of my own peers at a younger age) when being gay was 'odd' - when there was no scientific evidence that being gay was anything other than a choice and 'normal' people felt uncomfortable about the act and the people. That's well before the 'gay disease' headlines appeared!

So we had this situation in society where homosexuals were generally marginalised or rejected, and concern over sharing personal spaces with 'gays' was not unusual.

The same was true of disabled people. They were deemed 'unusual' and segregated in countless ways. Thankfully, we've come a long way since then.

I can absolutely see the parallels with trans people some 50 years later and why sometimes the racial, sexual and disability prejudices are used as an illustration of trans people's current predicament.

A penis is a penis, and nobody should fear it. It's those that own a penis who are (sometimes) to be feared, and that's where (I feel) the issue really lies. Removing the penis doesn't nececcesarily make you any less a penis owner. You've just discarded it, but you arguably still own one.

As stated, I'm not trans, but speak as a man - I cannot see that whatever I did to my body physically, that I would ever truly have the female experience (not that it's one experience, but you get my gist). I think I could enjoy many aspects of feminity and have many of the external and internal experiences they have, but I could never really be them.

All my life I have been a musician, I'm am quite competent, but not world class. I would love to be world class, and would love to play with other world class musicians. If I could enforce the opportunity to play with world class musicians I might be tempted to do so, and I am sure I would improve as a musician in the process, but I would still never be world class, no matter how much inclusion I asked for, no matter how exposed I was to their inner sanctum, I just wasn't born with 'quite' the ability they had despite being very good myself.

Why can't being 'very feminine' be enough?
Can't living life as a woman within the contraints and limitations of reality be enough?
I can live my life as a musician, people would accept my abilities as they are, and I can enjoy all the feelings that music gives me. I just have to accept that I'm not going to be able to experience playing Wembley Stadium, because that's life.

I'm not trying to trivialise this, just trying to understand why there needs to be more and more barriers broken down in order to make a trans feel more real.
All the world cannot be a stage for transpeople.

Clearly how we achieve liberation for woman is telling them to just accept their place and never challenge anything. Particularly if they're muslim.

Super. Got it.