Does anyone ever have a "are we the baddies"* moment?

What does a "female brain" even mean if it is in a male body?

Exactly. It's like saying that gay men have a female sexuality. No, ~5% men are just attracted to men, like ~95% of women usually are. Doesn't them women. And the other 5% of women are still women.

The "gender identity" thing makes even less sense. So a few percent of men have a strong feeling they want or should have a female body. How many women have a strong feeling they want a female body? An increasing number seem to not want it.

I believe wanting a female body appears to be a male-typical trait, even though only a few want it enough to start doing something about it.

It’s a cultic ideology and it preys on the kinds of people who are susceptible to cultic thinking. Of which there are many.

how the hell did it gain so much traction?

I see it as a collective psychological trend, exacerbated by the growth of social media and a focus on the individual as the centre of their personal universe.

Psychologist Lisa Marchiano terms it a "psychic epidemic".

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00332925.2017.1350804

The Christian Right is a US thing and has absolutely no relevance to the discussion of Law and Legislation and Protections/Rights in the U.K.

US discourse in general also doesn’t have any relevance here when it comes to social attitudes and behaviours. Most people in the U.K. are extremely moderate in their beliefs and attitudes and there isn’t any of the extremist politics.

Our playing field is completely different, politically and socially. Which is why I can’t stand it when people run in and ‘plop’ with utter rubbish about Christian Right or Conservative/Liberal blah blah blah. It means they don’t have the first clue.

males with gender dysphoria or autogynaephilia have brains with more similarities to female brains than other men

There aren't that many of these brain studies and they are based on small groups. Where the researchers bothered to differentiate between homosexual and heterosexual MTF trans people, they found that the homosexual males shared brain structure similarities with the female control group, but the heterosexual ones did not. They did however have a difference from the control groups of both sexes in the part of the brain linked to body self perception.

But yes I take your wider point that all it shows is that there is a large range of male brains (and female ones). It doesn't mean that the body is wrong for the brain.

Re the Christian right - I think the average fire-and-brimstone zealot is more likely to embrace the idea of gender identity. Those parents who try to beat the feminine out of their little boy until they suddenly decide that the child is 'trans' rather than possibly gay? Not exactly GC allies, are they?

Self-identified progressives who celebrate 'trans kids' are curiously silent about this dark side of gender identity ideology.

It seems less about the brain and more about some sense of consciousness.

YY. The way they conceptualise it seems to be very "woo".

1. What part of the brain is 'wrong'? Because it isn't the part that signals the body to produce certain hormones and controls things like sexed puberty, so which part is it?

It seems less about the brain and more about some sense of consciousness.

On brain sex, even if men and women had appreciably different brains and we find that those males with gender dysphoria or autogynaephilia have brains with more similarities to female brains than other men, all that means is that there is a large range of male brains .
That's it.

It doesn't mean that they have either the wrong brain nor the wrong body.

Self reflection is nice and all that, don't waste to much time or head space on it though.
You know you are on the right track stop letting people guilt you in order to persuade you otherwise, they do not have good intentions. A lot of pages here of women over analysing and trying so hard to #bekind.
I suggest when told our views allign with baddies we say "So fucking what? Maybe I can get them to wise up on other issues too"

And conversely, I’d never presume to bring my whole self to work either! There are many aspects of myself that I keep to myself, because I’m not out to make everything about me all the time and I don’t need everyone at work to know all about me or be involved in everything I think or feel or do. When I’m at work I’m there to work.

For me the "wrong brain for your body" argument falls down in two ways.

1 - there will be a range of brain features and shapes just like any body part. Some may resemble the typical brain of the opposite sex, just like some noses, hands, body shapes, heights etc. And no one addresses whether non-trans people - perhaps gender nonconforming people, gay people or people who are none of these - could also sometimes have these brain differences. That needs to be answered before we can decide if it means anything.

1. If it was actually true or could be shown that there is scannable brain evidence that makes you undeniably trans, then that's not compatible with self-ID. You're either trans or you're not and that could be shown by a physical test. So why do people who talk about brain evidence also support self-ID?

‘Bring you whole self to work’ is one of the most obnoxious concepts one could come up with!

There are a lot of people who absolutely should not be bringing their whole selves to work. I don’t want to be involved in your hobbies or what you do in your free time or what kinks you have or whatnot. I’m at work to work and I should be free to do so without it meaning an acceptance in my space, in my work time, of all manner of potential things.

Tolerance is tolerance. It means live and let live. It doesn’t mean I need to like what you do, celebrate what you do, or accept you doing it around me.

The only thing that ever causes me any doubt is the insistence that there is 'scientific evidence' of people having the wrong brain in their body

I've gone through the same thought process and come to the conclusion that we are asking the wrong question. What does a "female brain" even mean if it is in a male body? If there was such a thing then surely that's just evidence that brains are all different and not a direct function of our reproductive systems.

I also wonder why it should matter. The "I was born this way" claim has historically been a way to defend against conversion therapy. But in a progressive society it shouldn't matter if you were born this way, became this way or chose this way.

There is likely an element of social contagion as well. Particularly amongst girls.

I’m sure I read somewhere that apparently a large number of girls fell away from identifying as trans when lockdown happened - possibly as a result of feeling less pressure and stress in social terms or maybe as a result of less pressure overall due to not having to navigate school daily.

Re the huge increase in numbers of people now identifying as trans - of course they are. It's no surprise when anyone who feels uncomfortable in their body, feels like they have never fitted in, feels they don't easily conform to narrow gender roles etc - is being told (in children's books, in online communities, in work training sessions, in schools and universities, etc etc etc) that they could or must be trans. It must seem like a ready made answer on a plate.

Not only that, but identifying into it means you automatically get endless praise, are categorised as an oppressed minority and can shout down anyone who challenges you on anything at all, as transphobic. FFS you can even do all this by identifying as non-binary which means nothing at all, except that, like 99% of people, you're not strictly defined by a single set of gender norms.

No wonder that hordes of people are doing this, with a whole range from genuinely confused and vulnerable, to narcissistic, to predatory, to simply unwell. Affirming all these people as not being their biological sex on their say-so is mindboggling. It's also taking resources away from those who really struggle with severe dysphoria, that very small minority who used to make up the transsexual community. (Many of whom are also hated by TRAs)

So, I was deleted for mentioning medical procedures occurring in paediatrics. It was not bluntly explicit as I know it must not be called out for what it is. Some very dodgy folks out there.

I would be scared to express this in work, as D&I is the latest big thing and and if you are not with us 100% you are AGAINST us, and therefore burned at the stake. Or fired.

And yet, it's perfectly fine to continue to hold meetings that aren't accessible to people with boring disabilities or organise workplaces and workflows in that way - but it seems that always has, and always will be, the wrong sort of diversity.

It's unreasonable to expect colleagues to make [relatively trivial sort of accommodation] but fine to insist everyone should re-language, accept statements that they know to be a scientific nonsense etc.

But this is very different from the numbers of people who are declaring themselves as transgender.

I'm also very happy to hear contrary views as I hold my hand up to these just being my musings rather than based on any sound research.

It wasn't a feeling in my control. I was just automatically afraid - and that reaction is what would have kept me safe if a strange man had bad intentions. I wouldn't want to squash a gut reaction in a vulnerable child like that.

No, and this is a really important issue which often men are completely ignorant about, because they're not accustomed to being socialised to ignore their discomfort.

@AradiaGC Your view is exactly like mine. Back then, transsexuals with dysphoria who knew they weren't literally female but went through the process of getting a GRC and the surgery, yes I did feel for them.

But now, the boundaries kept being pushed further and further to the point where the boundary no longer exists. Now it's practically anyone who doesn't feel like a manly man straight into all female spaces.

Now you have photos of people in a female only shelter showing off an erection. Someone else in a female bathroom with a dress on, brandishing a fucking SWORD and boasting about frightening off a woman who came in. Women forced to call rapists "she" in court adding further distress, and if the rapist is found guilty it's now a woman's crime and they go to a women's prison, with the penis they used to rape still attached and functioning. What an absolute shitshow.

Despite there being clear exceptions in the law that can refuse transwomen in certain female only spaces, Stonewall have now got their narrative into every institution going to the point that it isn't applied. Sex isn't listed as a protected characteristic any more, replaced by gender. Blurring those lines.

Now there seems to be nowhere, absolutely nowhere that excludes males. And if somewhere is found that is, they are relentlessly hounded by screams of TRANSPHOBE! BIGOT! NAZI! until they relent. Another female space destroyed.

Women's online support groups being taken over by males, then those males demanding women stop talking about themselves in sex based language and start focusing on them. See that awful Facebook group where a male pretended to go through pregnancy and a stillbirth FFS and if the women on the group didn't fawn over him and support him they were kicked out.

Women's refuge charities denied funding because they don't focus enough on males.

Clear as the day males, on lesbian dating sites. Lesbian women being told they can date who they like but if they refuse anyone with a penis they're bigots.

And I've seen some TW on twitter stating they ARE female, the female SEX, they were born female, no difference at all between them and us.

And no surgery, no GRC, no dysphoria. About as far removed from the scenario at the start of this post as you can get.

And I haven't even mentioned sport yet, or women's jobs, awards etc.

But those transsexuals are still out there, and I do still feel for them because they never asked for this shower of shite or even imagined it would get this far.

I don't want to see anyone in distress but I cannot support my own erasure, or my daughters, to facilitate the crazy shit.

I don’t know enough about this and I’m not well versed like most on this thread. However, I am bothered.

We had the big ‘pronouns talk’ in work too. We had to listen to someone explain how he calls everyone ‘she’ - his male friends, his husband, his dad. This was met with smiles and fondness. I felt - how is that respectful to ME? - a female, having my sex thrown about like a catch-all phrase, explicitly including men?? Am I wrong?? I felt really insulted.

I would be scared to express this in work, as D&I is the latest big thing and and if you are not with us 100% you are AGAINST us, and therefore burned at the stake. Or fired.

I feel, the world, the corporate world, is sexist. I am new to my role abs I’ve been asked for my impressions of the company, by several VPs. I never like being provocative but my response seemed to stun - I said it’s a bit crazy, there are so few women in leadership, it’s hard to look at that list, and then you all have a female PA, a “girl”, or an office assistant doing all your admin. I said how strange it was! And then realised jaws were dropping. I was only stating the most obvious!

People just don’t want to hear it.

The best thing I heard Michelle Obama say was ... oh yes aim high yada yada yada... but remember, you have to elbow someone out of their seat to take it, and their friends won’t like it either. That’s where the fight still is.

You need to think what is driving the american model, private healthcare, lifelong patients could add billions to their cosmetic surgery combined with large swathes of the population being very religious and homophobic, transing non conforming children isnt too disimilar to the why people transition in Iran. Add into that the liberal elites looking to wave the flag for a new cause . Thank non existent god , that we are not like America and following their path. We are not on the wrong side, it makes no clinical sense to treat gender dysphoria with sugery and lifelong hormones unless thorough psychological assessment / support has been carried out for several years to ensure that the only solution to reducing distress is lifeling medical intervention. There are too many detransitioners who are gay and lesbian for this not be be an ethical and safeguarding issue.

The other thing that this issue has shown me is how utterly lacking in understanding most men are about women's experiences. Which is the root to understanding the GC position now.

I was talking to a friend who a lightbulb moment because he hadn't realised the constant risk-assessments women make when they go for a run - especially after dark, if they are brave enough to do that.

He was also staggered to learn that women feel responsible if/when they are attacked, because we are taught from such a young age to be responsible for our own safety - take an alarm, follow well-lit routes, tell someone where you are..

And if the worst happens, risk being told 'well going out running alone was a silly thing to do, wasn't it?'

We do these things because men, as a class, are dangerous to us. And unless men understand that, they really won't get why we don't want men in our spaces. They simply don't understand it. I'm not sure how we solve that.

I remember really vividly as a child of around 9/10 going into the toilets in a restaurant with my 5 year old sister. A trans woman came in while I was washing my hands. It was the 2 of us alone with this tall, well built man in a wig and high heels and I froze in fear.

She didn't behave like women do either, as she started a conversation with me about my dress.

I had to wait for my little sis to finish up and then almost ran out of there with her.

Why the reaction? Because female children are warned against being approached by strange men.

Is that socialisation we really want to dismantle? Should my mother have said 'that was an unkind reaction. It was just a woman using the toilet.'?

It wasn't a feeling in my control. I was just automatically afraid - and that reaction is what would have kept me safe if a strange man had bad intentions. I wouldn't want to squash a gut reaction in a vulnerable child like that.

So how do we square safeguarding with total inclusion? I just don't think it's possible.