I am embracing virtue signalling pronouns in emails

My concern is that the relevant space for those people cannot exist unless we actively create it. The energy seems to be put into the rejection of TW, rather than the creation of a space for them. Of course women also have conflicts and emotions, but empathy is not a finite pie, and nor is the alliance in rights for others.

I don't want anyone to be unhappy. Noone deserves pain. If there are moderate voices in the trans community then where are they? Too cowed by the tras to speak up? I hope for some moderation in this country and then everyone can find their space. My nature is to be kind but I think we need something more utilitarian.

I fear for transpeople, LGB and women in the states, I fear the excesses there are building to something nasty.

I am hugely conflicted on the subject of sports and prisons.

Using these as an example though @Didimum, why do you find them a big internal conflict if you believe that we shouldn't cause pain to those who don't deserve it?

Girls and women in strength, power and speed based sports cannot compete fairly (or safely in the case of contact sports) against natal men. Why is the pain of women losing scholarships, losing games, being harmed when playing etc less important than the pain of trans women who want to compete against them?

Girls and women in prison are already vulnerable to abuse and likely to underreport assaults. They are statistically more likely to have been victims of abuse in their pre-prison life. Why is the pain of multiple women being unsettled, disturbed, triggered or frightened by the presence of someone with a penis less important than the emotional pain of someone with a penis who would like to be in the female prison population?

Girls and women should not be expected to hold all the compassion for others, especially not at the expense of their own health and wellbeing.

Can you see how it is difficult to understand you asking people to be compassionate despite saying you're conflicted about sports and prisons? Where is the compassion for all the girls and women affected?

@Didimum so which boundaries are flexible, do you think?

It appears that for you the hard ones are prisons and sports, for me it's the hospitals and the changing rooms as well, for some women it's the toilets. Yet others are primarily concerned by crimes against the language.

Who will get to decide which of these should be hard and which ones will be designated flexible?

This seems like an argument to make sure than sex segregation is really necessary before ever doing it, not to let me into those spaces we've agreed to keep segregated. It doesn't matter how deep or long term the man's conflict is, he should never be in women's spaces. Women also have conflicts and emotions and these also need respecting.

@PearlClutch

Are we to abandon all boundaries, or criteria, on the basis that some people will be very sad if they aren't allowed to join a particular group?

But to call it ‘sad’ is trivialising their experience. It is overwhelmingly often a deeply painful, long-term conflict. Something that, of course, is not comparable to the struggle of women’s rights, but deserves empathy in its own right. We need not abandon ALL boundaries, but look to what boundaries are flexible in the name of not causing pain to someone who does not deserve pain - I feel this is what the true majority of trans women want.

@Didimum more than 90% of people are either men or women though. I agree that we need to compassionately create spaces for TW (who are a subset of men not a subset of women). But where sex segregation is relevant the compassionate spaces for them should be with the other men.

What I say is that if the signifiers of gender can only be identified by an individual is that the concept of gender is then of no use as q social category. This means we should revert to protecting spaces for females, the signifiers of which are very clear as are the oppressive sequelae. I also say that your assumption that someone who asks how do I find my gender has no conflict in finding where they belong is odd. It is built on the idea that people need to belong, which I believe is a falsehood. People may find a sense of belonging in a group they are excluded from but to then expect that group to include them neglects to consider the influences of power and the actual impact of including them. Reducing the issue to simply one of a physical attribute shows your lack of understanding. Females share a body type, that is all. However society then makes assumptions based on that body type and oppresses based on that body type. These assumptions are never made about obviously male bodied people. So although the category starts by being just about body type, it has many more impacts.

That all makes a lot of sense. Only sometimes I fear the trans community that shout the loudest on media platforms do not represent the true wishes and needs of the larger trans majority. Much like any media platform becomes an echo chamber for those with the most extreme voices. The trans women I know of in ‘real life’ do not wish to be named as true women, they wish to be only trans women - a subset from women, in a world that orders that you define yourself in order to participate in the very basics of day to day life. I am concerned their well-being, as the true majority and as decent human beings, is being damaged. Because where do they go? In practical society which segregated us consciously and unconsciously, where do they go that is compassionate to their need to live their life in acceptance and peace? What space do we create for them if they are not welcomed into the categories we practically have.

I would like to add here that while I am mostly trans inclusive, I am hugely conflicted on the subject of sports and prisons. That’s not really relevant to the above, but I would like to appear here with a sense of openness. Or perhaps it is relevant, in the spirit of realising very few people are 100% either one thing or another.

I think many people want to 'find their tribe'. In the past the seeker may just be left with a dodgy haircut and a dodgier wardrobe. Or we'd have organisations to protect people and society, to a greater or lesser degree, from falling into drugs, bad relationships, etc. Now major institutions are cheerleading children into poorly thought through medical and surgical decisions and insisting on males intruding into female lives and spaces.

I could live with the rest of it, I think; pronouns, cis-this, tran-the other, were it not for tras insistence on gobbling everything. No civil disagreements, as we've seen on this thread. Which posters have called 'the nastiest thread on MN'.

So I'm not prepared to pronoun, to 'be kind', to be 'cis'.

Just verbed pronoun

the notion that the signifiers of gender can only be identified by the individual? What if the sense of womanhood is felt differently, not only between a trans woman and a biological woman, but between two biological women?

Of course it is, because it's what we've been saying - it's personality. We are all different.

a world that still applies gender differentiation to almost every human experience

Does it? How does it? Is drinking a cup of tea different for me as a woman than it is for a man? Is this the 'men are from mars' school of thought? Because most feminists take issue with that.

Sexist stereotyping exists, of course. This doesn't actually mean that women are born liking the colour pink, or knitting, or kittens, or pillow fights.

what if someone finds an individual sense of belonging in a societal group that they are barred from, simply because of a physical attribute?

Like, say, older people who would really really like to discover their inner child and enroll in kindergarten?

(I refer you to StephonKnee Walsht, but do take care googling). Or an able bodied person who strongly identifies with amputees?

dailycaller.com/2015/06/02/meet-the-transabled-able-bodied-people-who-identity-as-disabled/

Are we to abandon all boundaries, or criteria, on the basis that some people will be very sad if they aren't allowed to join a particular group?

What if the sense of womanhood is felt differently, not only between a trans woman and a biological woman, but between two biological women?

Surely the point is that two biological women don't share a "sense of womanhood". What they share is a female body and that they have to deal with the social consequences of that body.

@Didimum

Your points are entirely valid.

However, even if you are 100% right, it still does not explain why this aspect of "gender", which is so mysterious it cannot be described, only experienced, and which no one can know about another through observation but only by explicit disclosure by the person themself, is at the same time so significant to how a person exists in society that it is not only interchangeable with sex in determining what social and legal support, protection and opportunities a person needs, but actually supercedes sex for all practical considerations outside procreation and medical care.

So, for me at least, it's not that I don't believe some inner quality called gender could exist - on the contrary, i can see many possible ways gender could be real and indeed I reckon could give a better answer and justification for it than most of the people we see on FWR who claim to believe in it - it's that there is no way gender could exist that backs up the demands that trans ideologists make off the back of it.

I have read the last few pages of this thread with a lot of interest though haven’t commented this far. This statement you pose above, and the same for ‘what is gender? How do I find mine?’ - what do you say to the notion that the signifiers of gender can only be identified by the individual? What if the sense of womanhood is felt differently, not only between a trans woman and a biological woman, but between two biological women?

I feel like the argument of ‘it’s personality, not gender’ cannot be applied in a world that still applies gender differentiation to almost every human experience. By that I mean that a trans identifying person will not practically fit in anywhere, and feel as if they can’t fit in anywhere, and we all crave to fit in. To be segregated from society is akin to torture.

By asking ‘how do I find my gender?’ leads me to believe that the asker has no conflicts in finding their gender, or, more pertinently, has no conflict in finding where they belong. But what if someone does have that conflict? And what if someone finds an individual sense of belonging in a societal group that they are barred from, simply because of a physical attribute?

@Whatiswrongwithmyknee

This is a repeatedly asked question which TRAs won't or can't answer. Their ignoring of this very simple question speaks absolute volumes.

It's a shame isn't it? It makes me feel that they either can't articulate an answer (in which case I don't know why they feel in a position to call people bigoted etc) or they don't want to because they are being disingenuous and not engaging with the discussion in good faith.

I also wouldn’t agree that the majority of people who advocate for trans inclusion insist there must be no words available to refer to a person’s ‘biological sex’ - whether you like the terms or not, ‘AFAB’ and ‘AMAB’ are commonly used for that purpose. I recognise that these terms do not directly capture what you mean by ‘biological sex’ (and are founded on beliefs about the nature of sex and gender that you reject), but they will capture almost all of the same people in reality, given that the sex recorded at birth for the vast majority of people (on the basis of their genitalia) will reflect their chromosomes and align with their other primary and secondary sex characteristics.

No, sex is NOT assigned at birth it is determined at conception and observed and recorded at birth, with the exception of the very rare cases of ambiguity when further tests will be done. That aside, TRAs say sex and gender/gender identity are not the same thing, Female and Male are not genders they are sex categories so the 'assigning at birth' is just a pile of crap that, unsurprisingly, completely contradicts the rest of the gender/gender identity mantra.

Thanks also from me for coming back @aseriesofstillimages I did read a bit about Willmer Broadnax and Billy Tipton. They seemed to have been contemporaries, although I don't know if they ever met, and both in band music. As it was their deaths that led to their secrets being disclosed, it's obviously impossible to ask them what they thought of themselves and why they did what they did.

They, apparently successfully, managed to fool everyone. I wonder if the stress of keeping the secret led to the ulcer that caused Tipton's death? Both directly and indirectly as Tipton seemed to have avoided seeking medical help.

i can't remember what your point was but thanks, again, for the name; sad and fascinating.

Suppose OPAB and OVAB could be used - observed penis and observed vulva at birth?

Or is that a bit too scientific accurate?

Political lobby: archaeologists shouldn't name biological sex or race of skeletal remains because the person may not agree with the labels.

Also political lobby: retrospectively transes everyone in sight in history without the faintest conscience.

The lack of coherence is not a bug, it's a feature.

Most if not all were female trying to get in on life and avoid being married, knocked up and sentenced to a life of hell, weren't they?

Also many were in the creative arts which were notorious for being male dominated.

Even JKR didn't put a female name on her books to avoid being sidelined.

And people wonder why most people think it's all nonsense.

This is a repeatedly asked question which TRAs won't or can't answer. Their ignoring of this very simple question speaks absolute volumes.

Woah! I do admire your ability to cut right through all the bullshit, and make things crystal clear, Eresh. Thanks.

Thank you

Right, you seem to know what your talking about, you appear confident on here anyway.
So surely if you believe sex and gender are deeply intertwined, you can explain gender.
What is gender?
How will I find mine?
How intertwined?

All genuine questions, because you can stop all this drama by answering.

Ok but now you have to say how they are related. Can you give some more detail?

How what is related? Not clear what you mean.