Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

How should we treat trans people?

564 replies

coffeeplease16 · 23/09/2019 19:34

I have been browsing the feminist thread with interest and been reading lots of arguments that accepting trans = encroaching on women’s rights and women’s only spaces. If you yourself believe that you can’t change sex, and being a women = having a vagina - how do you think we should include trans people in our society? I am genuinely interested, and not meaning to be goady. What is the ideal - how can we protect the rights of women without ostracising trans people from our society?

OP posts:
DecomposingComposers · 25/09/2019 18:53

All this to a pre pubescent child. (So realistically would need to be completed by 10. Possibly earlier)

No, you don't need to have conducted the surgery and hormones on a pre pubescent child. Thats why puberty blockers are prescribed - to stop the body from developing more pronounced secondary sexual characteristics.

DecomposingComposers · 25/09/2019 18:50

HumberElla

But this is what is happening already. That's why there's the push to get younger children onto puberty blockers.

There is a market for cosmetic surgery to remove or enhance secondary characteristics, to change brow and jaw shape, to shave the larynx to remove the Adams apple. This is the way this process is moving.

IsadoraQuagmire · 25/09/2019 18:49

Trans people don't "pass" Never. I can spot them a mile off, however much surgery they've had and however many hormones they've taken.

DecomposingComposers · 25/09/2019 18:45

I'm not saying whether these things should happen.

I'm not saying that puberty blockers don't cause serious side effects.

I didn't say that hormones turn testicles into ovaries. I said if you remove the gonads - so either orchidectomy or oopherectomy and then give hormones you effectively develop the secondary sexual characteristics of the sex that you identify with.

Yes, at the cellular level the DNA is unchanged but the differences in the skeleton of males and females before puberty is not as obvious as after.

HumberElla · 25/09/2019 18:43

You are describing extensive and highly invasive surgical removal of genitals and other sex organs. Administration of cross sex hormones.
Facial surgery, body modification surgery and associated follow up surgeries (these would be required as the child’s body continues to grow)
Huge doses of antibiotics.
Life long medication.

All this to a pre pubescent child. (So realistically would need to be completed by 10. Possibly earlier)

And all this to make a point that we can’t necessarily reliably recognise sex in adults?

I’m not sure I want to continue propping up your theory by exploring the idea of actual real life tests.

TheAlternativeTentacle · 25/09/2019 18:42

Even if 'they' passed, whoever 'they' are...

'They' are still a threat, as a class, to women, as a class. What with them being male.

Any male who thinks they are entitled to be in a space specifically for females, is automatically a threat as they are unable to identify that they, as a class, are a threat to females, as a class; and that females know this and will automatically, in some way or other, be at increased risk. So they, knowing this, should stay out.

All this nonsense of passing or not; that's not the issue here.

RufusthebewiIderedreindeer · 25/09/2019 18:41

bd67th

I found my self sexually attracted to a male co worker

I was a bit up set because i lived my husband dearly and didnt really like the young co workers personality

Turned out he wore the same aftershave as dh, all my sexual experiences were linked to that smell

Smell is incredibly important

BickerinBrattle · 25/09/2019 18:38

I’ll say, Decomposing, that you invest too much power in what is exceedingly expensive and fraught surgical technique as well as in the magic of hormones. Male bones are still encoded with male DNA, as are male sexual organs. Hormones can’t turn testicles into ovaries, and can’t reshape a male skeleton into a female skeleton.

Perhaps the thread could go back to my comment about Gender Euphoria, as opposed to Gender Dysphoria, and its implications as well as the issues it raises as to how we treat TW enjoying such euphoria, say, while in a cubicle in a women’s toilet.

About the male pounding on windows in Brighton as metaphor in action.

About rape culture writ large.

bd67th · 25/09/2019 18:37

medicine is able to prescribe puberty blockers to pre pubescent children so that they don't go through the normal changes that develop characteristics of their sex.

Puberty blockers that leave bones weaker, as the women who were given them for precocious puberty will testify. Your argument is basically "if we commit medical malpractise on impressionable children who aren't even old enough to consent to sex, they might pass as the opposite sex".

I once, on a night out, couldn't understand why my body responded with sexual arousal as if I'd seen a man, to what I at first glance took to be a woman. Being bisexual, I'm attracted to both sexes but the arousal feels different based on sex. A closer look revealed that the person I'd initially read as a woman was male. I'd responded in an involuntary and visceral way to male pheromones even when my eyes were not registering maleness. My point is that eyes are not the only sense I use to sex someone. That was 15 years ago and I pay much more attention to what I see now because I'm aware that more men perform femininity and some wish me harm. This incident is part of why I defend lesbians' right to refuse all males. They smell different and emit differing pheromones, and that matters.

RufusthebewiIderedreindeer · 25/09/2019 18:34

If you block puberty, remove the gonads and then give opposite sex hormones isn't it the case that the person will develop secondary sex characteristics of the sex they identify with

10 year old we are talking about

Being experimented on

DecomposingComposers · 25/09/2019 18:31

The indicators we use to identify sex differences in adults. For the purposes of reproduction - if we are still talking about evolution. Smell, particularly sweat or body odour is one example.

But those characteristics develop as a result of puberty and the action of hormones.

If you block puberty, remove the gonads and then give opposite sex hormones isn't it the case that the person will develop secondary sex characteristics of the sex they identify with?

So smell, facial features etc will develop in accordance with the sex hormones that are being administered rather than the sex hormones that would have been released by the body.

LangCleg · 25/09/2019 18:25

Like I say, forty pages.

You've had your answers. Detailed. From several posters. You're simply filibustering.

DecomposingComposers · 25/09/2019 18:23

They put gendered accoutrements such as hair style and make up onto faces. Then participants were asked to sex the faces. Sex recognition was consistent. And women were better at it than men.

But that isn't what we are necessarily talking about anymore. In the past, transsexual people would have gone through puberty and then, as an adult, had re assignment surgery on genitals.

Now, medicine is able to prescribe puberty blockers to pre pubescent children so that they don't go through the normal changes that develop characteristics of their sex. There are also surgical techniques to alter facial structures to remove or add characteristics associated with the sex they want to identify as.

Have studied been conducted into this?

Of course it would be more obvious if you took a photo of a male or female, photoshopped on a hairstyle of the opposite sex and then asked people to identify the sex.

HumberElla · 25/09/2019 18:21

So what are these indicators that are so difficult to disguise?

The indicators we use to identify sex differences in adults. For the purposes of reproduction - if we are still talking about evolution. Smell, particularly sweat or body odour is one example.

We don’t reproduce pre puberty.

LangCleg · 25/09/2019 18:17

I see another thread about to go to forty pages of endless repetition.

MNHQ should really get to grips with this.

LordProfFekkoThePenguinPhD · 25/09/2019 18:16

We are just animals after all. Hairless apes.

LangCleg · 25/09/2019 18:15

How did they "obscure" gender in the studies?

I've already told you. You're in denial.

They put gendered accoutrements such as hair style and make up onto faces. Then participants were asked to sex the faces. Sex recognition was consistent. And women were better at it than men.

Like I say: not a fever dream. The real world. It doesn't matter how many threads you filibuster on, human beings will retain the ability to recognise sex.

LordProfFekkoThePenguinPhD · 25/09/2019 18:09

I’m not sure what happens to a body on puberty blockers and you can’t stay on them indefinitely. I’m sure it doesn’t suspend you in an eternal childhood state or change your sex.

DecomposingComposers · 25/09/2019 18:02

HumberElla

So what are these indicators that are so difficult to disguise?

It's quite difficult to differentiate between pre pubescent boys and girls so if you arrest puberty how does that alter sex differences?

HumberElla · 25/09/2019 17:50

And exactly how evolved are human beings at identifying sex in people who have taken steps, be they hormonal or surgical, to disguise it?

It is extremely difficult to disguise sex. Human beings use more senses than just eyes and ears. One of the least evolved parts of our brain are those related to sex recognition. It is so fundamental to our existence that sex is hardwired in every cell. Disguise and evolution really doesn’t come into it.

DecomposingComposers · 25/09/2019 17:35

BickerinBrattle

But some of those characteristics are dependent on inherited traits - body size, height for example.

Some can be altered with surgery. Facial feminisation surgery for example.

Other differences will only become apparent after puberty. If people take puberty blockers will they ever develop an adult male skeleton and therefore larger hands, feet, arm length, jawline and the like?

BickerinBrattle · 25/09/2019 17:34

If only we all lived in 2-D!

LordProfFekkoThePenguinPhD · 25/09/2019 17:26

And a great photographer, lighting artist and photoshopper.

BickerinBrattle · 25/09/2019 17:22

The male skeletal structure is completely different to the female skeletal structure, and those differences can only be somewhat corrected for by surgery. The differences manifest in facial expression, gesture, movement, and silhouette.

Since humans evolved to spot predators visually more so than through any other sense, we take in details as a whole, and even if we can’t say why, like cats, we notice when our eyes spot something “off.”

Male faces have a brow ridge females don’t have, and the jaw is shaped differently. Male features have a different proportional separation as well. These differences manifest in facial expression.

Male shoulder joints are angled differently than female shoulder joints, and this affects gestures with the arms.

Male torsos are proportionately shorter than female torsos, while male arms are proportionately longer than female arms, and those differences manifest in entirely different silhouettes, an effect that will made larger if the surgically implanted breasts atop the male skeleton are large.

Male hands and feet are much larger than female hands and feet, and those differences will be readily apparent in any action involving fingers and hands and, for feet, while walking.

The male gait is different from the female gait because the pelvis is angled differently.

The shoulder-to-hip ratio is completely different, and this is noticeable in silhouette.

Unless expensive vocal cord surgery has been performed, a male speaks in a completely different register to a female voice.

It takes both extraordinary surgical effort and extraordinarily good luck in having been born at the end of the bell curve in which these skeletal differences are minimised, to counter these differences.

DecomposingComposers · 25/09/2019 17:20

How did they "obscure" gender in the studies?

How statistically significant were the results, given that even if people guessed the answer it was only ever going to be 50/50?

And exactly how evolved are human beings at identifying sex in people who have taken steps, be they hormonal or surgical, to disguise it? Given that it's only been medically possible within the last 50 or so years we won't have evolved to overcome it.

You think that you can always identify a trans person. I would not presume to be so presumptuous.