It's language isn't it

Back when I had DS1 in 2012 the attachment parenting groups I was in it was popular to go for gender neutral toys and clothes to combat gender stereotypes. But more along the lines of boys and girls can like any colour/character/hobbies/careers. There was a bit more status related to having sensitive boys or STEM loving girls, maybe but it wasn't about denying their biological sex.

I remember seeing a viral video when my son was little that was about parents who had accepted their young 'trans' child. It was presented as a loving, accepting thing, though a bit confusing because it did seem to be based on their child being into "girls" toys/dressing up and mixing pronouns at an age children are just learning to use them.

But I guess I thought they or their child's doctor knew somehow.

I think that's one of the fundamental realisations you come to if you are gender critical - that adults (both parents and HCPs) are wrongly assuming that just because some adult trans people talk about knowing at a young age, that ALL kids (or adolescents) who are non gender conforming will grow up to be trans people and so the right thing to do is to accept that and get them early 'treatment'.

When you realise the evidence is this isn't true and reflect on our own experiences as perhaps gender non-confoming childhoods as Jo Marchs, George (Georgina) Kirrins, and how as adult women, it doesn't make us less female. This error seems catastrophic.

I think the acceptance thing comes a lot from the teaming of T with LGB because these groups were often left wing, LGB accepting etc. So that, despite the obvious clash between the girls can do anything boys can do (and vica versa) and diagnosing kids as trans based on their interests these groups have been captured.

I wonder if things will change as our group of kids reach teenagehood and adult hood though. If the generation of kids who grew up under the very rigid 2000s marketing of strict segregation of blue and pink to the extent that there were pink globes for girls have found gender to be highly salient. Then maybe the kids who have grown up under the more gender neutral but biological reality- let toys be toys/let clothes be clothes era will be more resistant to gender woo. A brief respite before the kids who've grown up in the gender/sex confusion era who think they can choose which puberty they will go through 😬

I think another facto not yet discussed much on this thread, is the influence of gaming and social media where there is a sense of being able to control people's perceptions of your avatar/persona because they only know what you tell them/make public online. They are who they say they are. I think the Witch Trials podcast series or maybe Kathleen Stock's book touched on this role playing fiction people are able to play. But that breaks down in real life. In the past your character was more formed by a reputation you built in personal interactions over time. With more freedom to change and grow as you aged.

With social media, your opinion on a drunken night out 7 years ago that is no longer right think can be surfaced by search and you face the potential public shaming of a huge tribe of strangers.

Oh of course.

But they would have us believe that they understand it and we would too if only we were intelligent enough.

They don't understand it. If they understood it, they could explain it. They can't and they don't.

How ironic that the people who bang on about being inclusive morning, noon and night want to reorganise society according to an ideology that only they and their allies understand because everyone else is too stupid.

No, it makes perfect sense.

It's one of the things that annoys me so much about Keir Starmer. He's a lawyer. A very good one. He used to be the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Lawyers work with definitions all the time. Pretty much all contracts start with a list of definitions to make sure that everyone understands the key terms used in the contract to mean exactly the same thing.

For example:

"A Business Day is any day other than a Saturday, Sunday or Bank Holiday in England."

Legislation is also full of definitions. Obviously you can't define every word you use, but the important ones, and especially any word which is being used in a different sense to its usual meaning.

Male and female are words for biological sex. This is true in all animals, not just humans. They are words specifically relating to your reproductive role in your species.

The Gender Recognition Act, however, refers to male and female as genders, but doesn't define male, female or gender.

What does this mean???

It is total nonsense.

And rather than saying, "Hmm, the Gender Recognition Act is unworkable nonsense which could do with reforming, starting by putting some actual definitions in it," Keir Starmer is going, "Trans women are women because they identify as women."

He knows that's not an explanation. He knows it wouldn't be a workable definition in any contract or piece of legislation. He knows! But he doesn't care.

They also say it’s complex because they want to shut you down. They’re implying that you don’t have the intellectual ability or capacity for magical thinking to grasp the elusive complexities of being able to change sex.

But yes @RosaBonheur it’s very very simple.

RosaBonheur - Exactly. That's one the reasons Helen Joyce is brilliant when talking about this. I remember she described TWAW as a circular definition (I had to look that up) but basically it's one that relies on us already understanding the actual meaning of something.

So, someone claiming to identify as a woman already knows what an actual woman is in order to claim some sort of affinity with that. Otherwise it makes no sense. That's why saying 'a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman' is such bullshit, because it makes no sense. It's not a definition of anything. Definitions rely on us understanding the characteristics that are specific to that thing, otherwise they don't hold up.

A lamp is anything that identifies as a lamp. Tells you nothing about what a lamp is - and also exposes the fact that if you believed that, you would have to first have an understand of what a lamp actually is in order to compare.

Sorry I'm prob not explaining it great but it's basically all bullshit and falls apart once you apply logic.

They say it's complex because they refuse to answer simple questions, because none of it makes sense.

The question I mentioned earlier is a classic.

"If your children think they can choose whether they want to be a boy or a girl, what do they think a boy is and what do they think a girl is?"

No one can answer.

In order to claim that a male person can be have the gender of woman if they have a female gender identity which does not match their biological sex, someone must be able to answer the following questions:

• what is a man?
• what is a woman?
• what is gender?
• what is a gender identity?
• what do male people whose gender is woman have in common with female people?

As well as a few extras, such as:

• what rights do trans people not have that everyone else has?
• how is your gender identity relevant to other people?
• how is their gender identity relevant to things like competitive sport?
• where there is a conflict of rights, why should trans people take priority?

They can't answer any of these questions, but it's not because the answers are complex. The answers are actually simple.

• a man is an adult male human
• a woman is an adult female human
• gender is socially constructed stereotypes
• gender identity is a subjective and indefinable feeling that some people have
• nothing
• none
• it isn't
• it isn't
• they shouldn't

Unfortunately the simple answers don't get them what they want, so they pretend the questions are too complex to answer.

And the “genderbread” figure has no place in schools not only because it’s promoting genderist ideology but because from a purely educational point of view, it’s meaningless. The design itself is also very babyish and insults the intelligence of anyone aged 12 or over so yes, it needs to go.

I totally agree that it’s not complex - nobody can change sex. There are two sexes. That’s it. A three year old can grasp this simple fact.

I have however been told on several occasions by people who believe that men can be women that it’s very complex. I’m very open to trying to understand the complexity they refer to as I have a pretty sound ability to grasp arguments but nope, they won’t elaborate 🤷‍♀️ Pre-pubescent children can make irreversible decisions about taking puberty blockers, though, according to the believers (because they can grasp the complexities much better than an adult) 🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️

It's not complex.

Humans can't change sex.

Every argument in favour of trans women in women's spaces is just a fancy way of saying, "Because they want to be in women's spaces and they don't care what impact that has on women."

I can’t see their point of view because every which way I turn in my head when embarking upon their “line of reasoning” 🤔I hit a block very quickly and get a headache and so give up.

I think that may be why TRA types resort to insisting that it’s very “complex”, or throwing single-word hyperbolic insults or just plain old physical violence because they become mentally frustrated by the lack of logic, too, and have a similar brain meltdown but just can’t admit it.

CaptainWarbeck

The issue is that when each side uses 'woman' we mean entirely different things. Defining the language we're using in order to have a conversation is essential. We're talking at cross purposes.

I think that it would be a very good thing if the Government were to introduce a rule that, in all official communiqués, woman should mean woman, not someone mansquerading. And the same for man.

If need be, they can also use trans woman / trans man, as applicable.

The Mail is reporting that the gender bread figure may be banned, so it could be indicative of an outbreak of sensibleness.

It may have started as a language issue but it’s become about power, narcissism, and hatred of women.

Very well put!

I have always wondered why the fuck they couldn't have done this from the get go and owned it. You're a transwoman, s born male who feels like you should have been a woman. Nothing to be ashamed of! But not the same as a born female and pretending so only leads down s path of insanity.

Accept who you are, and who you are not, transfolk!

RosaBonheur:
So I started being more explicit. I said, "When I was a child, I understood that my brother had a willy because he was a boy and I didn't have one because I was a girl. If your children think they can choose whether to be a boy or a girl, presumably they don't believe a boy is a child with a willy and a girl is a child without a willy, because that's not something they get to choose. So what do they think a boy is? And what do they think a girl is?"

At that point she started calling me a fucking weirdo for talking about children's genitals ...

Ha. Neat story. Exemplifies nicely the trans ideologist's basic insoluble semantic difficulty. The ordinary sense of 'being a girl' is one they can't countenance, because if that's what it is to be a girl, it's plain that a boy can't be that. ('Boy' also in the usual, ordinary sense too, of course.)

But if not that, then what? - The demand is for a sense of 'girl' that both is, but also isn't, relevantly like the ordinary sense. Impossible, of course. So, 'No debate!', 'Oh, look, a squirrel!', 'You evil transphobe!', 'Section 28 all over again!', 'You're obsessed with genitals!'... Anything except face the fact that the meaning you are seeking is ruled out of court by the conditions that make you search for it.

It seems, from this, OP is actually wrong to say, 'The issue is that when each side uses 'woman' we mean entirely different things. There are not two different meanings in play, just one (which we all understand) and one failed attempt (doomed by its own requirements) to create a new meaning.

(This is why the question, 'What is a woman?' or, equivalently, 'What does "woman" mean?' (and cognate queries) is the crucial tripwire it is for trans apologists.)

Trans ideology does not make sense because it cannot make sense.

So true and excellently put, @RosaBonheur.

@nepeta Exactly.

I think this is clearest in the context of non binary gender identities.

In order to call yourself non binary, you need at least 90% of the population to have the gender identity of "man" or "woman". And these gender identities need to usually, but not always, correlate with the sexes "male" and "female".

If there was a 100% correlation between male sex and man gender identity, and female sex and woman gender identity, not only would trans people not exist, but it would be obvious that there were only supposed to be two gender identities, because gender identity would not exist separately from sex and therefore the non binary gender identity could not exist.

If a third of the population identified as non binary, there wouldn't be a binary at all. Gender identity would be ternary, to reflect the fact that the population was roughly divided into three gender identities, so they'd need "man", "woman" and a different word not suggesting that nearly everyone else is either a man or a woman. It would also be quite obvious that non binary people - or whatever their new name was - would still all have a very binary, male or female, sex. So the third category of people would be subdivided into those who share the same sex as men and trans women, and those who share the same sex as women and trans men.

If 100% of the population identified as non binary, it would cease to exist. There would be no men, no women, and no non binary - just humans, half of whom were male and the other half of whom were female. We would return to the status quo as it was from the beginning of human history, until about five minutes ago.

They rely on everyone else playing the roles they have chosen to cast them in, in order for their identity to exist. This doesn't account for others' free will, and therefore renders their identity a rather fragile, feeble thing in my opinion.

Similarly, trans women wouldn't exist without women. Women would exist just fine without trans women. We would continue to live our lives, womaning along, menstruating, getting pregnant, having babies, losing to men in sports. But if we didn't exist, trans women couldn't exist. I don't mean in the sense that without us, no one would exist, although that is true. But a women's toilet without any women in it is just a toilet, and a women's swimming competition without any women in it is a men's swimming competition, or an empty pool.

That's why it's so crucial to their existence that we must fall into line. Maybe that's what they really mean by us denying their right to exist. In a way, it is true. They only exist if we play the roles they have assigned to us. And that's why it makes them so angry and fearful when we say, "No, we're people in our own right. This isn't The Sims, you don't get to tell us what to do."

Just to add: I have tried to understand how a world where female sex cannot be mentioned at all would function. People would not forget about it, misogyny and sexism would know exactly where to strike and whom to assault, but fighting back would become incredibly difficult.

But what if they could forget about it and just ignore all the bad things which would keep happening to female people? Why, under those conditions, would any forms even ask for gender identities? Why would they have any relevance at all? It's like asking people to put their favourite dish or colour in such forms.

So in that sense the gender identity movement would be self-defeating. But they don't expect that to happen, because, in fact, their movement is crucially dependent on the biological sex -identifying female people to exist so that others can use them for their identification purposes as the boring background noise.

@CaptainWarbeck

The issue is that when each side uses 'woman' we mean entirely different things. Defining the language we're using in order to have a conversation is essential. We're talking at cross purposes.

And the other thing which is impossible to fix but which would help enormously is waving a magic wand and eradicating gender stereotypes. There's no need for 'gender' if you can present/dress/behave however you want regardless of sex.

That's my best understanding right now. I think feminist rhetoric does hurt trans feelings. The issue is that following trans ideology saves hurt feelings, but has far worse consequences for biological women. No one really wins here. That is unless society (patriarchy) miraculously becomes more accepting of gay, lesbian and gender nonconforming people.

Yes. The two sides define 'woman' in completely different ways. The gender identity church argues that 'woman' is a floating inner feeling of being feminine, nothing more. The gender critical church argues that 'woman' is an adult female human being.

We are told that if we insist on using the second definition we are bigots and transphobes because we are erasing the identities of trans and nonbinary people. But what we are NOT told is that if they insist on using the first definition they erase our embodied identities or definitions of ourselves as women.

As we are many more, the two cases are not symmetrical, and as effective feminism absolutely requires a name for the victims of sex-based oppression we are losing enormously if we allow the first definition to stand.

Those who transition don't always believe in the abstract floating blue or pink soul idea, but many do. Many nonbinary female people clearly define 'woman' as 'someone happy to be treated like shit for being of the female sex' and believe that they are unusual in opting out of that by making a private contract with the patriarchy. This will not work (sexism will spot them easily), but it harms most of us that they try, because they are telling us that we are happy to be Stepford Wives or Barbie dolls and they are not.

How all this cropped up again in a bizarre return to the 1950s values is something I have never understood. But back it is, only this time it's supported by both the left and the right that 'woman' is someone playing submissive, passive, emotional and nurturing roles.

The second wave feminists whose work I have read didn't all think the same way, but many of them were adamant about trying to fight gender stereotypes and gender roles, because those were, to a large extent, what held women down, just as they are doing that job in many countries even today.

The belief that women should never be in leadership positions was common, the belief that gatekeeping sex was women's task only was common (and led to the idea that rape may have been caused by what she wore or where she went), and the belief that most unpaid work was to be done by women was everywhere.

To start to make any changes at all, gender stereotypes HAD to be fought, and the second wave was partially successful in that. Or so I thought, until now.

In a way the gender identity ideology replaces feminism which questioned gender norms, roles, and stereotypes with something which appears to offer a way out of those, but only for a small minority who are willing to be on medications and have surgery. The rest will remain in the hierarchical system, and the ones at the bottom will still have vulvas.

I believe this is incredibly regressive and misogynistic.

RosaBonheur
**
Haha, she sounds bonkers. I dunno, to me non-binary is just another version of 'I'm so special, I couldn't possibly be like other people'. And you know what, fine if that 's what she wants to do, but don't expect other people to go along with it.

It would be interesting to hear how she feels she had children in the first place if she's not a woman.

A couple of years ago I was in a Facebook group for women in France which turned out to be completely captured by gender ideology.

There was quite a lively discussion around the Robert dictionary's decision to include the new gender neutral pronoun "iel", with most people agreeing that this was a really positive sign of France taking a step out of the dark ages towards a more progressive future where, it was heavily implied or sometimes explicitly stated, the English speaking world already is.

One of the women said she was a non binary person raising two non binary children. I asked her what that meant. She said that for now they were non binary but if when they were older they decided they wanted to be a boy or a girl they could choose to be either.

I started probing, saying, "Yes, but what would they be choosing between? What do they think a girl is, and what do they think a boy is? And what do they think non binary is?"

Round and round in circles we went. She started getting more and more defensive.

So I started being more explicit. I said, "When I was a child, I understood that my brother had a willy because he was a boy and I didn't have one because I was a girl. If your children think they can choose whether to be a boy or a girl, presumably they don't believe a boy is a child with a willy and a girl is a child without a willy, because that's not something they get to choose. So what do they think a boy is? And what do they think a girl is?"

At that point she started calling me a fucking weirdo for talking about children's genitals and there was a massive pile on, the group admin deleted all my comments and I left the group in disgust.

Eradicating gender stereotypes and enforcing gender stereotypes by making girls wear grey and boys wear sparkly tutus are diametric opposites.

I was at a thing recently where I had to sit behind a couple of dozen primary school children. They'd been captured by the ideology to the extent that all the girls had long hair (tied back) and all the boys short (it was a rural school, that might not be true in a town) but they were all wearing the same school uniform - dark sweatshirt and sweatpants, light coloured polo shirt, school crest, trainers of choice. No stereotypes in the clothing, stuff could have been passed between sisters and brothers no problem, no transitioning required.

OP, I find your posts disingenuous. At best.