I was wrong

@NecessaryScene I bet at least one of them is thinking the same thing about you.

This is very likely true. I'm very circumspect about my GC feelings around the majority of my friends as I know for a fact that some people are quite TRA and I'm honestly just not ready to lose friends to this. And even more so, lose the spaces that I honestly need to be happy. However, I do carefully mention things and have in the past had experiences with people where it's become clear we have similar feelings. At the moment, I feel like I'm doing this dance with a friend who I really, really don't want to lose. Who I had previously assumed would be full on TRA but recently this person has mentioned a few things recently that make me feel they are at least starting to question the dogma. I don't come straight out with how I feel, in part because I'm not brave and in part because I know that this was a whole process for me too.

I know we talk about 'peaking' and for me that was London Pride 2018 and the Get the L Out Protest. But there were lots and lots of little bits along the way that had made me uncomfortable and question the dogma. Even still, I thought my DB, who had peaked long before me, might be homophobic when he voiced his feelings. So whether it's cowardice or pragmatism, I'm choosing to tread carefully and listen more than talk and agreeing with what I do agree with.

The other thing is. I'm always questioning what I believe in now. I did a pretty full 180 on a lot of what I thought I knew. (And not only on this issue.) So it means that I know my feelings can change when presented with new information. So I'm quite carefully to genuinely listen and keep my mind open to new information. If someone presents a new angle to me that I've never thought of before, I'm going to consider it even if it's uncomfortable. And that's what I try to do for others. I can't tell anyone what conclusion they should draw but I try to help people have access to a full range of information.

Hi, OP.

Keep asking questions, keep an open mind, keep looking for evidence, and answers.

Despite an overwhelming amount of evidence that suggests to me that gender ideology is not only based on very shaky foundations but actively harmful, I remain open to the possibility that I am wrong.

You may lose friends over this issue, I won't lie. You may also attract opprobrium. But in the end, 'I'd rather be rude than a fucking liar'. (Magdalen Berns).

Also, the Endocrine Society released a statement on the fact that humans are a dimorphic species, earlier this year, I believe partly to put to bed some of the raging nonsense of 'sex is a spectrum' and partly perhaps to address the long standing inequalities in the treatment of male and female people - see Caroline Criado Perez and the field of 'sex specific medecine'.

Anyway, Endocrine Society statement below, my bolding. My understanding is 'dichotomous' is the more accurate term than 'binary'.:

'Sex is an important biological variable that must be considered in the design and analysis of human and animal research. The terms sex and gender should not be used interchangeably. Sex is dichotomous, with sex determination in the fertilized zygote stemming from unequal expression of sex chromosomal genes. By contrast, gender includes perception of the individual as male, female, or other, both by the individual and by society; both humans and animals have sex, but only humans have gender. '

academic.oup.com/edrv/article/42/3/219/6159361

Christ, I think it's just a "younger person in the gay community" thing

That is interesting. I have noticed it along with the use of 'folks' (in various spellings).

@babdoc

"They addressed us as “y’all” in one of their posts. I have found that to be a reliable marker for a TRA ally."

Christ, I think it's just a "younger person in the gay community" thing

[quote GayzedAndConfused]@Lezbehonest

"I realised that my academic side who has always sought evidence and argument wasn't compatible with these conversations."

This is the bit that frustrates me though, I'm from an academic background too and ive had kind of the opposite experience to you. I hear all these arguments about trans people that just are so clearly right when i read about them online (twitter mainly)but whenever I look up what the science/academia says in response it's always siding with trans talking points.

I've got a real disconnect in my head about what I know to be true about the problems trans stuff is causing, and what the people and scientific groups I trust are saying[/quote]
Could you provide some links to the science which sides with the trans talking points please?

OP - you sound a lot like where DH and I were about 4 or 5 years ago. I think the bit I had to sort of get my head around before I could move on, was understanding two key points:

1. my previous understanding of trans was based on what I'd seen in the media etc in which trans people were people for whom anyone would have incredible sympathy as they struggled massively to navigate the world and did their best to truly become the man/woman they wanted to be via surgery etc. Think back to many portrayals of trans people in the last 10 years and you will see this is true. But I had to realise that in fact this wasn't what was happening and that the people who were yelling the loudest that TWAW weren't the ones who were, to all intents and purposes, actually very similar to me as a woman.

1. Being against the mantra of TWAW is NOT anti trans. I remain deeply sympathetic to trans people. I 100% believe they should get the support they need, good medical care etc. I just had to realise that in the same way that I believe children should get support, or men, that that support is not the same as the support I need as a woman.

Longer term, I think I also started to feel my identity was being taken away. I am so angry not just at the menstruators or cervix-haver language but at the fact that we are not using this language for men. No one is referring to "penis havers" or "sperm producers"

Obviously, there are a million other things, but those were the bits I had to overcome first in order to start to fully embrace and feel comfortable with my GC position.

I'd think that was a good thing, especially as the US has so few refuges (online and IRL) for gender critical thinking.

The closest "US" equivalent is Ovarit - the site created by the ex-mods of Reddit's r/GenderCritical after it was banned. It's Reddit-like, rather than a forum, and a majority-US crowd, though quite a few Brits too.

Not a huge amount of overlap between the Mumsnet FWR and Ovarit user bases, afaict.

Any US readers should check it out - US legal issues in particular get more detailed coverage there.

Welcome

Clearly MN is of such renown it has reached an international audience. I'd think that was a good thing, especially as the US has so few refuges (online and IRL) for gender critical thinking.

Race is a hell of a lot fuzzier than sex. Would you use that as a justification for removing protections for those at risk of racism? Should we just accept discrimination if a concept is deemed to be fuzzy?

I have American friends who use y'all, and I have no idea as to their views on the subject. It is an American slang so a bit of a leap to presume gayzedandconfused is a TRA. Also, in her defence, her friend did get called condescending, stupid and/or ignorant, so that probably smarts a bit.

Curious, if at any point, you feel you're still an overly courteous work in progress, definitely read my link!

Hi @Lezbehonest

As you can see, you aren't the only one having problems squaring this circle, from any perspective.

As others have said, take some time. Have a read round, you have been offered some pretty good links. I am sure it all looks overwhelming.

But be assured that many others here, myself incuded, have been where you are and have had to slowly reconstruct their sense of self - it is hard to undo the years and years of socialisation that demands we 'be nice' and not point out that the King really is in the altogether!

Read you later

Lezbehonest This is a good essay to read when you're feeling guilty.

theblisteringrebuttal.substack.com/p/4183e962-ded5-47f7-b89f-c49b9de6cbb5

I fear all the PPs offering thoughtful reasoned arguments will be lost on GayzedAndConfused.
They addressed us as “y’all” in one of their posts. I have found that to be a reliable marker for a TRA ally.

I don’t think anyone is attacking your PhD friend on a personal level, @GayzedAndConfused. After all, none of us knows your friend, so how could we?

People are disputing the assertion about sex being a spectrum and being “fuzzy”.

That’s the difference between posters on this board and TRAs. We tend to take issue with the argument, not the person arguing.

Ah yes, the redefinition of the terminology to fit the answer you want to get.

Hormonal sex wasn't a thing until TRAs wanted to say that trans people literally changed sex. Now it's being used to say that people on hormonal therapies are the sex they want to be because they've artificially lowered/increased their hormone levels.

Men with gynaecomastia have never been called hormonally female just because they grew breasts due to side effects of prostate cancer treatment or obesity. Why is that? It's not because noone knew that the breast growth was down to estrogen levels.

GayzedAndConfused

I would take issue with this bit.

A genotypic male might have some genetic traits that mean his system is flooded with estrogen so if she was trying to refer to this guy specifically she'd say he's hormonally female and chromosomally male, and like if that estrogen made him grow breasts or something he'd be phenotypically a mix of male and female traits

Her argument rests on a simplication of endocrinology. I am female. I spent over a decade without being flooded with oestrogen. It's called being a child.

I am now post-puberty but pre-menopausal, which means I have a hormonal cycle, in which my levels of oestrogen, progesterone, testosterone and luteinising hormone all rise and fall.

In the future, assuming I don't get run over by a us first, I will go through menopause, and my ovaries will stop producing oestrogen.

At all these points, I will still be female.

Cherry-picking one of the hormones involved in female endocrinology and categorizing it as the female hormone does not make a man with high oestrogen levels "hormonally female". He's a man whose levels of that hormone have been raised.

It is complete balderdash, which unsexes women post-menopause!

(God, I hate it when that happens. "its" in the first line of course. Not "it's.")

About the biology of sex and it's fuzziness. In mammalian vertebrates (humans, bats, whales, etc, etc) it is not at all fuzzy. The producer of large gametes is female, the one making small gametes is male. Chromosomes are always xx for female and xy for male. (If there are exceptions, I'm unaware of them.)

Some vertebrates, eg birds, have different sex determining chromosomes, xx males, xz females, but they can't change between them. Once you get to older lineages, such as a few reptiles, some fish, etc, egg or sperm production can change in an individual depending on environmental conditions.

And in fungi for instance, some have multiple mating strains which have to pair in precise ways to produce offspring. Wild, but totally irrelevant to mammals.

Usually, what people mean when they try to imply human sexes are "fuzzy" is an unwarranted jump from Differences of Sexual Development (DSDs) aka intersex conditions. There are issues during development that can make the external sex organs look different than expected. But concluding therefore that sex itself is somehow non-binary would be like looking at conjoined twins (another developmental issue) and deciding that was evidence we were all on a spectrum of having a variable number of limbs.

So, tl:dr; your biology Ph.D. friend has allowed herself to believe absurdities.

I think PhD can get quite excited by the complexity and forget that in the real world we've always known which type of human is which without much of an issue.

Getting obsessed with the possibility of sex ambiguities is like getting obsessed with the possibility of a coin flip landing on its edge.

In humans the odds of "unambiguous male"/"unambiguous female"/"some ambiguity" are about the same as "heads"/"tails"/"edge".

Any system that doesn't concentrate on coins usually being heads or tails, or even acknowledge that that's the normal result and start saying "coin flip results are a spectrum", is going to be distinctly suboptimal.

(Plus anyone trying to distract you from whether a coin is head or tails by talking about "edges" is probably trying to swindle you).

Also, the existence of people with differences of sex development does not have anything to do with transgender identity. DSDs are biological, gender identity is social and psychological.