Please can someone who thinks that TWAW..

HairyStorm great post.

TWAW if, and only if, the defining, unifying feature of woman, that we all share, is internalised misogyny.

And you have to have internalised a metric fuckton of misogyny to define yourself like that.

I am saving that to my computer. The heels, the makeup, the sexually-submissive AGPs, everything, it's internalised misogyny.

Room full of people, I pick out all the women. Truth is I don't know what's in their pants

You do though, in almost every instance. There's a combination of cues that tell you what genitalia someone was was born with:

• shoe size
• hand size
• waist-hip ratio
• waist-shoulder ratio
• shoulder-hip ratio
• arm and leg length relative to torso length
• amount of breast tissue
• neck width
• adam's apple (or lack of)
• face shape
• voice (if they speak)

The last two in particular will tell you a lot: I've often been unsure as to a person's sex when they have their back to me but become instantly sure when they turned to face me. I can tell someone's sex over the phone without even seeing them. There are good reasons for this: millions of years of evolution as a species that reproduces sexually and has a poor sense of smell means that we rely on visual and sound cues as to someone's sex to decide whether they are someone we should mate with, fight, or flee from. Women in particular need to reliably read these cues because of the threat men pose to us of rape, which in case anyone had forgotten, requires a penis and therefore our ability to judge "penis or vulva" without performing an intimate examination has to be spot-on.

When someone trans has had hormones or surgery that alter their appearance, the cues get confused because some of them change (breast tissue changes, adam's apple can be reduced or the lack of one hidden by a beard, facial feminisation surgery for TW) but others can never change. The cues will never be completely in concordance for a trans person, leading to the "uncanny valley" effect and also leading to women double- and triple-checking as they try to gauge sex to risk assess someone who has intentionally obfuscated their sex cues. If I cannot gauge a person's sex at a single glance, I am immediately nervous because my risk assessment process has been disrupted.

Plenty of people believe that TWAW. Loads. Hundreds.

They are the powerful - in government

They have access to the powerful - LBG organisations, lobby groups

They make grants to further the transgender ideology - Children in Need

They threaten or actually withdraw grants from womens' organisations that cannot demonstrate 'diversity'

They make decisions that are harmful - whether that's in prisons, or in the council chambers and businesses introducing mixed sex facilities.

They take the piss and laugh - handing out gongs to men with dresses or high-fiving Chloe, the "first woman to be a front-line soldier" (even though she's only been a woman for two weeks).

These people are far more dangerous than TRAs - because they can get away with their stealthy promotion of TWAW and are in a position to do the most harm. They've done it already.

Why don't THEY tell us why and how TWAW?

HairyStorm that is a really fascinating insight into why one might think that the social category trumped the biological category.

I can see I would have gone through a similar journey had I been a younger woman and had "trans" been a thing when I was younger. (In fact I think maybe I went through a similar journey with liberal vs. radical feminism, getting myself really confused about biology and mistaking the recognition that biology forms the "material conditions" underlying female oppression for the erroneous view that some form of biological essentialism was being blamed... In short, I was a very muddled twenty-something back in the day.)

HairyStorm, great analysis there!

Barracker yes, When people say TWAW, what they are really saying is "females are not allowed to be recognised as themselves, distinct from males, on their own terms, ever'" it's about so much more than toilets.

AnchorMum your post is so moving.

"If we didn't care about trans people you'd soon know it. It's because we care so much, especially about actual women and girls (whether they still identify as such or not), that we come here day after day to read, absorb, think and learn.

It's emotional labour and it's exhausting. But we're doing it because we believe that 'woman' means something and don't want to lose the means of identifying our own selves - and risking all the consequences that will inevitably come from that."

@RatRolyPoly I don't always agree with you either but on this thread I would really like to hear your thoughts more!

I don't agree with what Blaire says but I quite like Blaire's manner!

Jumping in having only read three pages, because my thoughts have been swirling around this all afternoon.

I used to accept "trans women are women" despite the difference in biology because I understood that the label woman refers to both a biological category and a social category, which generally (but not exclusively because intersex) overlap. I fully accepted the existence of the social category, because men and women are evidently treated very differently socially, and my externally-female friend was very definitely in the woman social category despite not quite meeting the biological requirements. it is therefore possible, I reasoned, to be a woman/female socially yet a man/male biologically.

I weighted the social category as more important than the biological category, because I had been raised to believe that who we are is more important than what we are. I was also keenly aware that my intersex friend was struggling with her identity within the male/female binary society is built around, and I was subconsciously very strongly motivated to comfort her by emphasising our shared membership of the social category while devaluing the importance of the question mark over membership of the biological category.

I can identify all the problems with my younger self's reasoning now - I won't preach to the choir but suffice to say: experiencing first hand, and witnessing in my peers, just how the social category gets utterly shafted when we exercise our membership of the biological category by reproducing, was a hell of a kick up the metaphorical arse.

From these experiences and observations, I inferred that enforced membership of the social category and all that entails - the clothes, the career paths, the caring, all of the other submission-inducing crap that is shoved into the pink box and forced on us from the day we are born - the gender that really IS violently and coercively assigned - is the very mechanism by which women/females are oppressed. And "trans women are women" not because they are in the biological category, not because they are in the social category, but because they are in the "embodying and identifying with the mechanism of oppression" category, and the overlap between that category and the biological category is more commonly known as internalised misogyny. TWAW if, and only if, the defining, unifying feature of woman, that we all share, is internalised misogyny.

And you have to have internalised a metric fuckton of misogyny to define yourself like that.

This makes me particularly angry because I feel my goodwill towards my intersex friend, my urge to comfort and support her and boost her psychologically, my capacity for sisterhood, has been exploited and used to strengthen and legally enshrine the very mechanism by which I and my sisters are oppressed.

BrownPaperTeddy glad we agree on much.

"I think a male presenting, testoterone-filled, beardy woman would traumatise women in a rape crisis centre, yes. That is a muddy area."

Yes, it might well traumatize women so it's not a muddy area, it's s no.

Children are not allowed to serve alcohol in pubs. But that doesn't mean all adults are suitable to serve alcohol in pubs.

Children are not allowed to serve alcohol in pubs doesn't automatically tell you about what adults can do in relation to the sale of alcohol.

Before her death from dementia my mum was (of course) an adult but not employable in a pub.

"And this is where the "you can't change your sex. You are your natal sex" argument loses me."

It shouldn't really because it is really only in relation to sex, women who make themselves artificially look like males should not be surprised if that affects things but it still doesn't change their sex.

"I chose to only have a female conduct my smear test. In walks "Brian" who used to be Daphne and my argument would be what?"

Then you say you are not comfortable with that person. You do need to say why or anything. You can ask to see someone else. Brian should realise why and should be thinking of the patient not themselves. IMHO.

HubrisComicGhoul just to be clear I am arguing for unisex gender neutral spaces in addition to single sex spaces and not instead of them.

Who mentiond Blaire White? Have you seen the interview with the men's rights movement?

What was the Eddie Izzard photo?

If we are talking about knowing, then as 'knowing' is a true belief, that means feminists are on the winning side of the argument every time. What Rat and others have is a false belief, which is not knowledge at all.

Of course we know. It ridiculous to pretend otherwise. It's why we have descriptive terms, including the term 'androgynous'.

I should have written "certain". I don't think we're going to agree!

Yeah, your workmate might look at you like you're nuts for saying you can't be sure, but... well... you aren't sure, in the very strictest sense of the word

In the strictest sense of the word I am 100% sure.

Rat: you have to acknowledge that "woman" in everyday life is not used to describe those with the confirmed characteristic of being of the female sex. It just isn't.

Bert: Why do I have to acknowledge that? Who made the decision?

Rat: No-one made that decision, its just the way it is, isn't it?

Who told you that is just the way it is?

Q - And in your example of the room full of people, what leads a person born a man to decide that he is actually a woman?

Rat: I don't know I'm afraid, I only have the same third person accounts to go on as you do I think. But I'm not convinced that they might not usually be right, in some capacity.

Rat you said that you could help and now you are saying you actually have no idea. Your 'help' consists of 'a man said it so it must be true'.

Can't be arsed to read back but I'm pretty sure i was careful not to say we can't ever know, Lass. One's parents were the exact example I was thinking of. Yeah, your workmate might look at you like you're nuts for saying you can't be sure, but... well... you aren't sure, in the very strictest sense of the word.

Anyway, I've thoroughly enjoyed catching up on the thread : Fermats and BrownPaperTeddy I've found particularly interesting so far

Sorry - posted too soon - they would look at me as if I taken leave of my senses.

Of course transgender people exist but to extrapolate from that that we can't know if anyone is really a man or woman is not reality.

Sorry Rat but even with the qualification that is still patently untrue. I know with absolute certainty that my husband, my son, my brother are men. I can say with absolute certainty my mother and my mother in law

If I were to say to the men I work with I can't be absolutely certain you are a man

Sorry, haven't caught up on the thread but I felt bad skipping out on your questions Bert, so I've come back to them. I realise the thread has moved on...

Rat- I realize that this is reductio ad absurdam- but do you think that people can identify as anything they want to? If not, why not?

I mean obviously they can, but I'm quite sure it would carry the same weight without the decades of evidenced incidences of transgenderism, the psychological assessments, the way we develop physiologically and develop our sexual characteristics, and the nature of the concept of gender. So I can't see it being a useful comparison.

And in your example of the room full of people, what leads a person born a man to decide that he is actually a woman?

I don't know I'm afraid, I only have the same third person accounts to go on as you do I think. But I'm not convinced that they might not usually be right, in some capacity.

Do I, a person born a woman, have any right to query someone who says they are also a woman? It’s not something I would do at a drinks party, obviously, but in other circumstances?

I can't imagine a situation outside of a professional context where you would. Or at least not one where there would be any point.

Why do I have to acknowledge that? Who made the decision?

No-one made that decision, its just the way it is, isn't it?

That is patently not true.

Lass, I didn't mean to suggest we don't know the difference without any degree of certainty. I meant we don't know it with absolute certainty. Which patently is true, most of the time. I read back my wording and it's my fault; I meant "certainty" in absolute terms, but it reads like we couldn't have any degree of certainty. Which, as you say, is patently untrue.

It might seem cynical, but I can't find any other logic.

Cynical but entirely plausible.

Good work Bertrand and Rat both.

The only reason "Trans woman are women" is a thing is because it is the only way to avoid the requirement for a third space.

Trans people support it because their need for validation is everything to them and politicians/business people support it because it saves them the cost of having to provide that safe space.

It might seem cynical, but I can't find any other logic.

@silentcrow

What you say there makes a lot of sense.

And I agree absolutely - single sex spaces should not be sacrificed at all.