How do gender theorists classify those with severe learning difficulties?

Absolutely this. Imagine if the resources focused on "trans" issues were put into supporting people with disabilities. I don't remember the flags, parades, special dispensations for people with disabilities. Doesn't their vulnerability matter?

And they have the nerve to try and tell us to "be kind". The whole gender ideology movement is a house of cards built by people who are so envious of not having something about them that others have been oppressed for, that they had to invent one to identify into.

excuse typos and posting too soon!

If this issue ever comes up for my sister at work I won't hesitate to remind her supervisor that her right to tell the truth is protcted under the law.

Well - perhaps not what you were edging towards but - a transphobe who deserves to be burnt at the stake with everyone else who doesn't or can't keep up with the stupidly esoteric gender vocabulary they insist upon.

The only time I have got into a conversation about pronouns with people who I was pretty sure weren't going to agree with me, was because one of my friends said she'd been 'pulled up for misgendering someone' in her office. My (disabled) sister volunteers in that same office. I just thought - what are they going to do when my sister inevitably mis-genders this person? Are they going to discipline her? For saying out loud what everybody else is trying very hard not to? Will she be called a transphone? (which is what I ended up being called in this conversation!) It's just so nonsensical.

Luckily she hasn't been in very much recently because of covid,

My daughter pointed out a recent trend on tiktok of young gender ideologues whinging about their horribly hateful terfy siblings who dead named them or didn't use the correct pronouns. They got lots of support and sympathy, despite the fact the siblings they were complaining about had learning difficulties and/or were autistic and minimally verbal 🙄

As I said, the ableism is horrific

Haha. So funny.

I seem to remember one of them saying that a woman with dementia isn’t a woman because she doesn’t have an identity.

Hmm, the transwoman I know - yes, shock horror I know a transwoman well and funnily enough like them - is starting to suffer from dementia, so according to TRAs will no longer have any identity at all? How fucking hideous these people are.

Well - perhaps not what you were edging towards but - a transphobe who deserves to be burnt at the stake with everyone else who doesn't or can't keep up with the stupidly esoteric gender vocabulary they insist upon.

My daughter pointed out a recent trend on tiktok of young gender ideologues whinging about their horribly hateful terfy siblings who dead named them or didn't use the correct pronouns. They got lots of support and sympathy, despite the fact the siblings they were complaining about had learning difficulties and/or were autistic and minimally verbal 🙄

Yeah I was at a kids’ event funded by the local council earlier and they handed out feedback forms — I wasn’t surprised to see a question on “what gender do you identify with”, but the final one was “do you identify as disabled”. 😬 As if it’s possible to identify in and out of disability as you please. Proper pissed me off!

It bugs me when we can be all essentialist about a dress being emphatically female but not a vagina. So if you wear a dress you're female more emphatically than if you have a vagina. Makes no sense. Dresses are just fashion. I'm sure some tribe somewhere has all the men wearing dresses and they are all still male. I've never understood the conflation of gender identity and fashion. Weird as anything.

I've asked this a few times. I've never got an answer.

However, in Maya Forstater's recent employment tribunal, one of her ex-managers explained that without a gender identity, someone was "just a corpse".

Yes, it is. I have a physical disability. There are things most people's bodies can do that I can't. My body still isn't 'wrong' - it's the only one I have and I make the best of it. I once brought this up to TRAs on Twitter and they accused me of being envious because 'trans children' could have surgery to fix their 'defective' bodies but I couldn't, and clearly this was the reason I was opposed to children transitioning. It was quite upsetting and I say that as someone who has been in lots of internet arguments.

That says it all about 'inclusiveness'.

Another one here with a disabled sibling. Gowing up alongside her certainly shaped how I see the world and gave me an insight into how the world sees her.

The one I always wonder about is the 'wrong body' thing. I mean if the bodies of perfectly ordinary NT girls and boys can be 'wrong', what on earth must they think of her? (or anyone with an obvious outward sign of disability?)

(and of course you can extrapolate to anybody with something which could be considered 'wrong' - nose too big, boobs too small, too fat, too thin...?)

'Wrong body' just seems so ablist to me.

Argh, that video.... Completely oblivious to the fact that carers, education people, parents, others who love and look after the person in question know the person and carefully observe and follow their likes, dislikes, preferences, in clothes, music, toys and favourite objects etc etc. It's a normal every day part of caring. There will be a wide spectrum of preferences for people of both sexes, without anyone needing to run around worrying about should they change the person's pronouns and stuff them into a gender box. This is about serving the needs of adults writing these packs by the production of these packs.

Possibly not suitable for your brother but here's a resource designed to target and confuse vulnerable people with a learning disability

"People with a learning disability are just like anyone else. We can identify in lots of different ways. Words like these help us describe how we feel. Male, female, both, neither or somewhere in between"

DS has ASD and once asked me to put some nail polish on him. When he came into some mild teasing at school, he asked me to take it of again.

Then for a few days afterwards he would ask me to check his outfit over at the door and make sure it was 'suitable for boys'

I had to explain to him (a kid of nearly 10) that shops are divided into boy sections and girl sections and I always shop for him in the boy section and, not to worry, because everything he owned was socially acceptable and unremarkable on a boy.

He had genuinely not noticed this and seemed to regard it as another inexplicable rule that neurotypicals have made up to complicate life. Otoh, he was definately grateful for some pointers on navigating it.

I know some people who would say 'Oh what a shame he doesnt wear nail polish anymore. His natural gender expression has been crushed.'
But honestly: The nail polish, the 'boy clothes', none of it has any social meaning to him.

I’m always saying the same as you OP.
it entirely undermines the notion that self-identity is the only way to identify someone’s sex.
My daughter is profoundly disabled. She is non verbal. She does not understand the idea of naming, of tomorrow/today, time, plans, stereotypes… and never will.
When my first daughter died at full term because she had never taken a breath outside the womb I was shocked to discover that legally she was never a person.
Thats how I feel gender identity crusaders would view my daughter- as not a person.
Because obviously you can only be verbal to self-identify and behaviour is indicative of absolutely nothing.
I wonder if anyone who is a TRA had a stroke that rendered them unable to speak or move without assistance would they stop being a person too..?
It makes me very angry how disabled people are viewed, in general and in this issue most especially

the dogged insistence about what is considered “gender non-conforming” or not.

Yes, the 'non conforming' involving a uniform as much as everything else.

What was that quote a few months back about someone sadly noticing at a Levellers' concert, hundreds of youngsters passionately singing along about 'there's only one way of life and that's your own', quite oblivious to the fact that they were all wearing identical uniform, a bunch of little clones busily conforming in the fond and romantic illusion of non conformity.

The idea that you can just be biologically female and after that do and feel and think and wear whatever tf you like, without rules or labels, is too shocking to be countenanced.

Oh, why are they always over all the threads here calling women “cis” and straight without even asking first then? We had some threads last night for example where a few genderists came on and told us all we were all obviously straight, despite not even having bothered to ask.

The one thing we know about gender ideology is the absolute devotion to certain kinds of gender stereotypes — mainly hair, clothes, and so on — and the dogged insistence about what is considered “gender non-conforming” or not.

This was a few years ago so I don't have the source to hand, but I remember some piece of guidance being produced saying that children with learning disabilities who don't pick up on gender stereotypes aged 4/5 the way that their peers do should be actively taught about them, and given the toys and activities that 'match' their sex. If they don't like this and reject it, it's proof they're trans.

So incredibly regressive. (And yes, doesn't account for those with more severe disabilities who wouldn't understand the stereotype 'teaching' in the first place.)