Your age is your age, your sex is your sex. Neither can be changed.

How on earth did he find an adoptive family?

I'm afraid that individual didn't. if you look up articles in mainstream press what they describe that they have is sex partners who join in the sex based games in which the person plays the role of a child as part of a consensual sex life with their partners who play the role of parent/guardians.

What people do in their own homes, etc etc. But under a law that you are legally what you identify as with access to the same rights and same resources, I don't see how a law that allowed you to identify your sex and enjoy your authentic identity wouldn't equally allow this individual to identify their age and enjoy their authentic identity.

If I explain any further I risk deletion. But in all cases, other people's rights not to be used as non consenting props and context for adult male sexual experiences needs to be considered. Because it is inevitable that for a percentage, this is what is happening. How large that percentage is open to debate; also how much women and children should be expected to suck up being used in this way to allow those innocent and sincere to live as they wish.

It isn't a situation in which everyone's rights are equally protected.

I don't find the age analogy helpful, because, in keeping with everyone else here, I change my age on an annual basis.

Yes, but your age changes regardless of your identity, and you have no control over your age. No under 18 year old is allowed to buy cigarettes, regardless of any other protected characteristics.

I think race is less helpful, because the differences between people of different races are largely cosmetic, and the way we group race doesn't have much logic. When somebody says they are Caucasian, what they mean is that to their knowledge all their recent ancestors came from a particular part of the world. That doesn't mean much.

Racism is obviously real - people see race. However race is just inherited appearance traits shared by people whose ancestors remained together during a particular period in history.

Indeed. Or the health implications of a false sex. Women have a stronger immune system. If you were born with a Y chromosome and you get very sick with Covid 19 is it sensible to tell the doctors that you are a woman?

I don't find the age analogy helpful, because, in keeping with everyone else here, I change my age on an annual basis.
Race or ethnicity would surely be a closer analogy. I've never been a man and I've never been south east Asian. I've lived with men, and I've lived in South East Asia, but I'm a Caucasian woman.

Wow, that Canadian man up-thread living as a six year old girl is beyond bizarre. How on earth did he find an adoptive family?

I was clumsily posing that gender is lived, not determined, and influences how we are treated and who we become.

You seem to be confusing 'gender' with personality. Gender is imposed on us by society, according to our sex, as merrymouse has explained. We do not live as a gender, although each of us will conform or not conform to the stereotypes for our sex to different degrees, depending on our personalities.

Unfortunately, other people will treat us as they see fit, regardless of our own personal perception of ourselves and our personalities. A rapist still viewed this transman as a woman.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-41614755

It really pisses me off when people say you shouldn't define women by their genitals.

It is my genitals and my reproductive system that makes me a woman. Nothing else. I don't identify as a woman. I wear trousers, I work in a factory with men. I have male friends. But none of that is going to prevent sex discrimination on the basis of my reproductive system. None of that stopped me getting pushed out of a job following the birth of my child. None of that stopped rapey men making advances on me as a teen. None of it makes me capable of playing football on a men's team.

I am short and small built. No matter how I identify I will be treated as a woman. And my female body puts me at a physical disadvantage in certain tasks.

How is it possible to live as a gender?

Whe a male claims they feel and live as a woman, what do they mean by that?

These statements get made endlessly as a reason why male transpeople should have access to female spaces, but no one, ever, has been able to explain what they mean by it.

FerventFox is conflating two completely different protected characteristics, age and disability.

Oops. I quoted the wrong post! Sorry. Will ask for it to be deleted.

OP, I've considered this question too. Here is what I've come up with:

So, sex is a biological state, male or female as defined by genitalia at birth. Ditto age, also a biological state albeit one which changes over time. As mentioned elsewhere, yes, you could feel like a twenty year old in terms of your interests, outlook etc but the physical age of your body can never be changed to match your emotional age and there will come a point where no matter how much you'd like to continue behaving like a twenty year old, you will just have to accept that it's not physically possible.
WRT adults with learning disabilities, I think that's a different matter. This is a case of mental development not keeping pace with physical development due to neurological issues. I think the point is that age has both a biological and developmental aspect whereas sex is (for the vast majority of humans) simply a defintive biological state.
I'm sure that what I've said can be pulled apart and discussed further, but that's my initial thoughts on the subect!

aeon.co/essays/the-idea-that-gender-is-a-spectrum-is-a-new-gender-prison

This essay might be helpful.

I was clumsily posing that gender is lived, not determined, and influences how we are treated and who we become.

I think you are confused about gender too. Here is the definition of gender from the WHO:

Gender refers to the roles, behaviours, activities, attributes and opportunities that any society considers appropriate for girls and boys, and women and men. Gender interacts with, but is different from, the binary categories of biological sex.

Gender is what society considers appropriate. It is defined by other people's expectations. Women and men are limited by gender expectations regardless of how they actually behave and regardless of their own personal sense of identity. 'Gender' is the thing that prevents a man from wearing a skirt in the UK, unless it's specifically a kilt.

Conversely, while it has been socially acceptable for decades for a woman to wear clothes that are entirely 'male', this does not allow women to escape gender expectations, and they still need sex based rights.

But everyone’s biology is also unique, and there are as many differences between people with the same biology and similarities between people with different biology, to say that there is more going on, and that biology (sex, genetics, race, ability) is as relevant as society makes it.

I'm not sure how you are viewing this site, but look at the top of the page - can you see the menus for conception and pregnancy? My personality, views and interests might be more similar to 90% of men than to 90% of women, but I cannot escape the consequences of a female reproductive system. I need sex based rights. How is this so difficult for you to grasp?

I don’t know if it is possible to live an authentic life as a woman (or as a man) - but I hope it’s something to strive for?

Why not just live an authentic life as a human being?

Perhaps an analogy might help you. Somebody with hearing loss may suffer direct discrimination, and they may suffer indirect discrimination because e.g. at the moment they find communication difficult because people are wearing masks.

None of this has anything to do with their identity, validity, value or authenticity.

If you are really interested in this subject, you should read 'Invisible Women' by Caroline Criado Perez. It is study of all the ways that women suffer indirect discrimination, because it is assumed that sex is irrelevant.

*well before birth

@Dadaist I’ve not read the whole thread so it may have been pointed out already. The sex of my children was recorded well before and had nothing to do with their external genitalia.

Blood tests, CVS and amniocentesis don’t take any notice of external appearance...

As an old girl I'm astonished that this is even considered to be material for an argument. Evidently, it is. Bloody hell.

Those who are not female but ‘live as a woman’, live as their interpretation of what a woman is. That is pretty simple to understand too when you listen to Alex Drummond tell how they love to feel they are broadening the bandwidth by tinkering with their car and then putting on a dress. Fuck that. I was doing that at 16, decades ago. Maybe the difference was that I never thought it was unusual for me to do it, or play rugby and cricket. But that is not fucking ‘gender’. That was me simply being me.

I don’t believe in ‘gender’ and I want to abolish it completely.

But everyone’s biology is also unique, and there are as many differences between people with the same biology and similarities between people with different biology,

When it comes to sex category, it is easy. Every person is either male or female. It really is that simple.

I’m going to apologise for late night pontificating - which is I think on a par with drunk texting.

But I think people are extrapolating far too much from what I posed. I wasn’t explaining anything - framing questions without answer really! I don’t think I have all the answers.

As a few have leapt on what I meant as ‘live life as a woman’ - I think people are trying to smoke out something like ‘if you take on a female persona then you know what it is to be a woman’ sort of thing. I meant nothing of the sort. I was clumsily posing that gender is lived, not determined, and influences how we are treated and who we become.

Of course biology is intertwined with experience and socialisation. But everyone’s biology is also unique, and there are as many differences between people with the same biology and similarities between people with different biology, to say that there is more going on, and that biology (sex, genetics, race, ability) is as relevant as society makes it.

But I’m struck by @borntobequiet - that life is driven by the biology of your sex, and ‘everything else is performance’. I don’t know if it is possible to live an authentic life as a woman (or as a man) - but I hope it’s something to strive for?

you could argue that for the majority of trans adults who spend their entire lives identifying as the opposite gender that they cannot help that they innately feel and identify with the gender opposite to that of their biological sex.

They may feel as if they feel like the opposite sex.

I might feel as if I feel like a cat.

But as I am not a cat, and they are not the opposite sex, those feelings are unlikely to be accurate.

Add to that the fact that any man who can still be identified as male from his appearance, can believe people are responding to him as they would a woman, but they are not. They respond to him as male. Those responses are deeply fixed and cannot be wished away.

Trying to think how spending today “living as a woman” would differ in any way from “living as a man”. Get up, eat breakfast, get dressed (jeans, T-shirt, jumper), do some work from home, go shopping...Nope, can’t think of anything apart from putting up with the cramps caused by my Mirena coil. The one I have because I have a problematic menopause and I have it to supply the progesterone I need to stop the lining of my uterus thickening too much. The menopause I’m coping with because I’m a woman, because my genitals and the rest of my reproductive system are those of a woman. Oh, and I’ll catch up with my children later, as their mother who gave birth to them. (DD is also a woman, though she has no uterus. She had a hysterectomy for medical reasons, and will never have children. But she had to have the hysterectomy because she is a woman, and is still a woman.)
Living as a woman is all about the genitals and reproductive system. Everything else is performance.

we discover equality regardless of biology!

This movement to believe people can and should change sex is not happening to equalize the differences in sexes in society. Because, the reality is that there are differences.

do you mean that we should not make reasonable allowances for biology when you say ‘regardless of biology’?

If biological differences are not allowed for even in the basic manual labour job descriptions, you end up with women being injured and having more time off work.

If biological differences are not allowed for, women’s sports are now unsafe as well as unfair to women. Because there are insurmountable differences in male puberty that leave women injured and well, if 15 yr old boys can still beat Olympic women champions at some events, blatantly unfair.

In your world, how do we account for the time women take to gestate a baby and recover while looking after that baby? Or are you saying that you believe a man should have an implanted uterus and be filled with drugs to stop the rejection, while pushing artificial drugs to do all the things a female body is programmed to do so that they can have babies too and even up the ‘biological’ gap. Oh, and you know women are told not to even drink alcohol, a drug, while pregnant as it can harm the baby. So what effect on that.baby?

Or shall we go full utopian and have perfect babies gestated in incubators and androids to bring up children so no one has to take time off or even use the biology we have to have children. Because those scenarios never seem to end well?

But is this what you mean by regardless of biology? Because denying biological differences between sexes has ramifications.

or do you just mean put in reasonable allowances into law and making sure the people who need those protections Have them and keep tweaking them until the equality gap is acceptable?? Like we have now but it is being diluted to accommodate some people’s feelings?