Reconciling competing rights

Sorry that is long but I just read the whole thread and wanted to comment!

@GaspingShark "I would like you to consider the possibility that somebody else has a different experience of the world, of their gender from yours and it is equally valid. "gender is a kind of social expression" is not a fact, it's a hypothesis. It is you who are telling them what to believe and who to be when you insist "Just trust me, Poppy, once you believe it's ok to play with trucks you'll feel alright."

Just to be clear toilets, prisons etc in this country are segregated by sex, not how one feels about oneself. I cannot really know how someone else feels about themselves. I am generally happy to believe people that they 'feel like a boy/man' or 'feel like a girl/women' but I can't prove how they really feel and neither can they.

But even if they could, prisons and hospital wards are not segregated on how one feels.

Plus regarding gender as a social construct, I'd argue it is actually more than a hypothesis. There seems to be plenty of evidence 'gender' is socially constructed and no evidence that it is innate.

All the brain scan stuff is very disputed.

To me, it is clear that some people are unhappy in their birth sex, I would not deny that. Some people will never feel happy no matter how normal it is for girls to play with trucks or boys to play with Barbies. And I think the latter is probably a long way off, where as girls playing with trucks is considered quite normal.

So for a small number of people they will feel very uncomfortable in their birth sex and I'd like them to get all the help they can to feel comfortable, even if that means medication and surgery as adults. But even that does not alter the fact that gender' as we are all discussing it really is constructed socially.

snowflakeespecial.tumblr.com/post/114684943185/social-construct-masterpost

The problem with all the gender and nuancing is that laws about who can do what etc need to be clear. So people who want to be identified as the opposite of their birth sex have a process they can use right now. Which ensures they get help for crippling dysphoria. Potential new rules that anyone can identify as they like, will take away that safety net for trans people and for women.

This discussion has touched on non-binary or gender neutral issues.

I watched an interview with Owl and Fox. Owl was talking about being non-binary. Then Piers Morgan asked her which prison she would go to if she had to go to prison, guess what, the female one as she has a GRC.

Because when in a 'crunch' situation she did not want to be incarcerated with a load of men. I think a lot of women would feel just the same way, so although I respect people's right to identify as non-binary I must say that when the chips are down people may well see that biology is a real factor of life that cannot actually be so easily ignored! And I agree with whoever said upthread, or might have been on another thread that we need prison spaces for trans people, so they can be safe. I totally get that.

Keep chumming the water, GaspingShark, someone is bound to take the bait.

Hi @GaspingShark

Just to say you used a word that is not normally 'accepted' in your comment and I believe some trans activists look for that word as proof of transphobic intent. Which I believe/know you did not mean. I will not repeat it but you can see it XXed out below...

"A temporary solution at the moment would seem to me to be to segregate the XXXXXXX into third spaces until everyone calms down, it's dehumanising but hey that's society for you."

To engage with that thought, as I believe you intended it, why wo9uld this need to be a temporary until everyone (does that mean women) calms down. Calm down dear is generally a bit offensive.

But most importantly, why is it dehumanising?

If one is a trans person, why is it dehumanisiing to be recognised as one?

Trans women are not, in fact, biological women but that does not stop them being human. One cannot stop being human anymore than one can change biological sex.

So surely recognizing that fact someone is trans is not a dehumanising thing.

I know once, a long time ago, the number of males wanting to be thought as female, and vice versa, was very low. Society had very rigid ideas of how males and females dressed and acted. Now, many of the those rules/ideas are gone, or at least in the process of going. Or should I say they were until we began defining children by the kind of toys they played with and whether they liked dresses or not!

But if we could get back to the pathway we were on in he 70s and 80s when toys were for anyone, clothes were for anyone, when Beckham wore a sarong and no one really cared etc, then many males who feel inclined to frilly clothes etc could just be that, men who wanted to dress a certain way.

There is room in society for the very small number of people who are genuinely dysphoric to gain a GRC in the route they can now and be courtesy accepted as 'honorary' members of the sex class women. But like all males I would expect them not to be going after jobs which would place them in conflict with women. Like women's sports.

humpty.jpg

Actually I though they thought they were being too clever by half and lost interest in trying to have a conversation with a person I view as not very.

If you didn't take "female woman-type-creature partaking of the gay" to indicate a less than total embrace of any particular identity then I would put it down to an unwillingness to deal with nuances you don't understand.

That's not fair. It's just a bizarre, laboured description of a lesbian. Neither she nor anyone else is necessarily going to assume it's code for your personal identity issues.

Male entitlement

forgive me if I see it as tendentious scaremongering.

Forgive me if I believe the people who have told me it has happened to them, and the huge amount of evidence of that rapey, coercive make entitlement to lesbians mentality online. But you do you.

I'm sure it happens but no more than all the other kinds of pressuring into sex so forgive me if I see it as tendentious scaremongering.

Request denied.

Watch yourself there Squirrel, or the reader person will be here to complain about the fawning again.

LaSqrrl

Not being able to keep your story straight isn't quite the same thing though, is it?

LOL, you just have such a magical knack of just zeroing in on it.

For me, it was the OP's a 5'4 female woman-type-creature partaking of the gay

Me thinks this is another potato thebewilderness, do you agree?

Usually we understand when women are a bit coy.
Not being able to keep your story straight isn't quite the same thing though, is it?

So here I am saying something you don't like and your response isn't "Ooh, here's somebody who's broken free of gender restrictions," it's "Ooh, here's a man." It's exactly the same kind of reductive bullshit that you think you're fighting against.

Another person said they thought you were a man, not me. Go back and read. I thought your response to me when I asked you about being gay and what you thought about the cotton ceiling was fucking bizarre and evasive. I accepted that you said you were a gay woman. Which you then backtracked on and sneered about.

Looks like you have been committing a lot of felonies lately, Ereshkigal

Gender roles and expectations vary from culture to culture but we will pass laws based on these beliefs that no one believes. Recipe for disaster if you ask me.

That's nice you finally let it out, graspingshark.

Not on here, no. You have form. I've seen you misgender people who have clearly said and I know to be adulthumanfemales, over and over again, simply because they think differently from you

No you haven't. I might have said once or twice that I thought specific posters were men because it seemed like they might be from their posting style. And then they said no and I accepted that. And that's not "misgendering" it's missexing.

I would like you to consider the possibility that somebody else has a different experience of the world, of their gender from yours and it is equally valid

Their perception is equally valid. But perception is subjective. Do you believe people when they say they know there is a god because they feel it?

Nothing wrong if you do, just curious.

I'm not telling anyone who to be. Express gender however you like as far as i'm concerned - i've been 'misgendered' my whole life. But sex is a fact. We do know that.