First time poster - question about GC beliefs

I haven't read every page yet, but there's also an element here, where I'm not comfortable participating in someone else's public fetish.

If Brian across the road comes over for a cup of tea and a normal, neighbourly chat with a full face of makeup, or in a dress, I don't mind, he can wear what he likes. If he's doing it because it excites him to knock on my door and he's nursing a stiffy from the party dress and fake eyelashes and hoping to draw my attention to it, then I very much mind.

Much like there's men who call me 'love' and I couldn't care less, it's just being familiar and they mean nothing by it, and there's men who call me 'love' and it makes my skin crawl because the way they pitch it is misogynistic and patronising.

Funnily enough, I put the living as a woman point to a 'be kind' family member a year or two back and the reply was along the lines of clothes and name etc which I pointed out were just stereotypes and it was actually regressive to push the idea that women and men have to look and behave in a certain ways.

Anyway, when I saw this relative over Christmas, their position had changed somewhat - they now think it is a social contagion type fad and that while people should be free to wear and behave how they'd like a TW is not and will never be a woman and should not call himself one. And no to using wrong sex pronouns.

I have yet to introduce this relative to the delights of the erotic crossdressing aspect being another reason why I am a hard 'no' now, having started at 'be kind, poor dysphoric individuals' like so many of us.

And I still like KJKs answer to a young woman at LWS in Nottingham along the lines of you can identify however you like, but what you can't do is force everyone else to see you that way.

I would say that Queer theory started off as a probably fairly laudable academic enterprise; questioning and examining norms and assumptions.

Questioning norms and assumptions is good.

However, that in no way means it's necessarily a good thing to 'queer' those norms! Some of them exist for good reasons and many assumptions are valid.

Compare and contrast with how science works. You're questioning assumptions all the time, testing, throwing out theories which have been disproved, building new ones based on evidence.

Good summary, and I would also add that queer theory is an outgrowth of postmodernism. Postmodernism basically posits that all ideas of objectivity and empiricism are repressive - that categories and boundaries are bad, and the tools of the patriarchal oppressor.

Not only is this bullcrap (I'm an empiricist) but it also poses especial danger to the most vulnerable in human society, because vulnerable people tend to need boundaries and categories the most.

eg we need to be able to define disabled people in order to help disabled people as a class. We need to be able to define the working class before we can help them as a class. We need to be able to define vulnerable women as a class before we can help them as a class. etc etc etc.

Per Plato and, er, pretty much everyone with a brain since then, in order to define what something is, one needs also to be able to define what it is not ie throw a boundary around it. Otherwise one cannot define it.

This is why GC women like myself protest against the trans movement, because it seeks to destroy the definition of woman which will and is damaging and threatening the safety of the most vulnerable of women the world over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_theory

I would say that Queer theory started off as a probably fairly laudable academic enterprise; questioning and examining norms and assumptions.

Unfortunately if you create a project that incorporates the undermining of social norms in its foundational intent, then it will probably inevitably attract people who have their own agendas for subverting/dismantling/undermining some norms which most people actually think are very desirable.

I think some academics have also acknowledged that queer theory is a sort of meta-theory that kind of contains the seeds of its own destruction within it. If you are going to 'dismantle' everything, eventually you have to dismantle 'queer theory' itself.

tl;dr: Academics high on their own brainfarts sometimes don't consider practical and logical consequences.

I believe that I am not being too unfair on queer theory to say that your second paragraph is missing a few words.

The "queering of society" is a radical project to over-rule and re-shape boundaries particularly when they relate to sex and sexuality, and age, and in particular when they involve sex, sexuality AND age. It is a project that few know about or understand, but if presented factually and outside of the context of "TWAW, be kind" would be rejected by at least 95% of the population, and maybe much much more. Most people, including the childless, don't have much sympathy with adults who wish to break down sexual boundaries between adults and children.

Hm. Perhaps very longterm. The ghastly tropes those sorts seem stuck on are running around late seventies lingerie ads right now. I assume it's something to do with Tennents Lager cans at the age these men hit puberty. So I think it will take a good forty years for them to catch up to lumberjack/wispy as any sort of a trope.

Queer Theory - from which the contemporary transgenderism movement arises is predicated on transgressing boundaries.

The "queering of society" is a radical project to over-rule and re-shape boundaries particularly when they relate to sex and sexuality. The problem is that the old power structures are still in place, and as a consequence it is women's and children's boundaries that are being violated in the name of individual freedom..

The whole thing is totally unstable. I saw recently some man getting himself tattooed mastectomy scars so he could roleplay as a transman. An FTM Reddit forum was very upset about him using them as their identity.

As more women do the "transman" or "nonbinary" thing, the "pretend to be female" urge many men get will increasingly start latching onto those "female enby" or "transman" style cues...

At some point it could totally flip, with ridiculous stripper-wear mainly being associated with men, hence insufficiently female-coded; so all the Malaga types could end up wearing lumberjack shirts, blue hair and trying to pull off wispy moustaches, as that's what all the women in their "Queer" circles are wearing...

I don't think surgery and hormones are a good or effective treatment for body dysmorphia. That's for any type of body dysmorphia, not just gender dysphoria.

At age 17 I felt desperately uncomfortable in my own body and was desperate to be prescribed appetite suppressants. My GP wouldn't give them to me because my BMI at the time was 12. She found me a bed in a hospital instead and over the following months and years I slowly learned how to accept my healthy body as it was and how to keep it healthy.

That should be the treatment for all types of body dysmorphia. Not always inpatient but certainly psychological treatment not physical treatment.

In the UK we have a socialised healthcare system and so as a taxpayer I strongly disagree with our communal money being used on experimental surgeries with poorly understood outcomes and limited efficacy.

This is what I asked my DC when we were debating the topic (DC is firmly TWAW from a bekind position) and DC said, “well it’s not wearing a dress or having a handbag” and then hesitated and stopped there.

Cognitive dissonance too great to process those thoughts whilst holding on to the belief that TWAW. So could not carry on the conversation any further. Maybe one day…

I'm years down the road on this, but still learned plenty from this podcast, particularly the 2nd episode.
I think OP might find it useful.
gender-a-wider-lens.captivate.fm/

If that AMA thread is still there, it's well worth a read.

I think it was Translucent who announced with great fanfare, that there was proof that being trans is a biological condition' and were eviscerated by TRA's who were horrified that there might be a way to 'prove' that someone is trans and therefore blow the concept of self id out the water.

do you accept that some people firmly believe they are born in the 'wrong' body?

Body dysmorphia is a thing. Some people with entirely unremarkable noses firmly believe they're huge and ugly. Some people starving themselves to death are sincerely convinced they're disgustingly fat. Some people believe they have the wrong number of legs and are deeply distressed by the extra one.

But believing something, no matter how firmly or sincerely, doesn't make it true. You are born in - and as - your body. You can't accidentally end up in someone else's, because then you would be them instead of you.

and have a right to live as the other sex?

You can't. It's not a matter of rights, it's a matter of reality. You cannot change sex, therefore you cannot live as the opposite sex.

How about gender? Well ... that's where it gets complicated. Because gender shifts, and is made up of 2 artifical boxes that nobody really fits into.

My grandfather smoked a pipe and fought with the Gurkhas. He also embroidered beautiful floral tablecloths and taught my mother to knit.

My grandmother was also keen on knitting and embroidery, she also joined the army. In common with most of her regiment, she rejected the uniform dress in favour of trousers, because when you're clambering in and out of trucks on the front line of the liberation of France a dress is impractical and the male soldiers can see your knickers. In later life she reverted to skirts and taught herself quantum physics for fun.

My other grandmother was never in the army, was obsessed with housework, and I never once saw her in a skirt or dress - only trousers.

Both grandmothers had short hair and wore flat shoes.

What gender were any of them living as?

Should it be as unremarkable for a man to have long hair and wear makeup and a skirt as it is for a woman to have short hair, no makeup and trousers? Yes. It was good enough for the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, so why not now? Should it be OK for women to enjoy brewing beer? Yes - beer used to be considered a women's thing, not a men's one, in medieval Britain. Should people be allowed to do any job, have any hobby or interest regardless of their sex? Of course.

Is it OK for men to cry and talk about their feelings? Or for women to express their anger? Yes - much healthier all round.

But there's no ned or reason to pretend to be the opposite sex in order to do any of these things.

GC feminism is about breaking down those boxes so people can live how they choose, regardless of sex. Gender ideology is about keeping and reinforcing the boxes, but allowing a few people to jump between them.

possibly taking hormones and undergoing surgery?

Hormones and surgery are extremely serious medical interventions, with substantial adverse effects even if they go 'well'. When they go badly - which is often - the consequences are horrific.

So they absolutely should not be available to children. If they are in psychological distress they should get rapid and thorough psychological intervention to understand the source of and attempt to alleviate that distress. For the vast majority, this exploratory therapy (and for lower levels of distress, simply supportive watchful waiting) has been shown to be sufficient for it to resolve.

Adults? More difficult. We let people with body dysmorphia about their nose have cosmetic surgery (although rarely on the NHS). We don't give gastric bands to anorexics, or let people chop off a healthy leg - even privately.

So I think for adults - after extensive psychological assessment and therapy - there are some circumstances in which allowing it might be reasonable, and many in which it would remain unethical. Exactly where I would draw the line is tricky.

Certainly if done it should be with much better information and long-term follow up than is currently the case. And if long-term studies show an intervention is not effective (the small amount of data available suggest surgery doesn’t improve, and may worsen, long term psychological outcomes) then it should be reassessed.

Or [that] these people should not ever be supported to live as the opposite sex? That doing so is always wrong?

As above it's not so much a question of 'wrong' as impossible/illogical.

People should be allowed to live as they choose - provided there isn't an adverse effect on others. But there's no reason to give additional support to someone 'living as' the opposite sex (or gender) - whatever they perceive that to mean - than there is to support any other choices they make about their life.

Wow, pope, that’s fascinating.

This just shows how nonsensical the whole thing is.

“Those with 'woman mind' traits are women, and this includes male people with those traits.
^^
Those with 'man mind traits' are men, and this includes female people.
^^
The fact that millions of female people can have 'man minds' does not suggest to you that in fact psychological traits can present equally in both sexes, but you conclude instead that their bodies are the wrong sex for their mind.
^^
Based on this alone, you believe that 'man mind' people should be treated as male in all situations bar a very few, and same for women minds being treated as female. Bear in mind you say as a woman you are less rational than 50% of the population yet think it is fine to advocate for both sexes on this.”

Stonking article from Dr Em there, thank you for sharing it.

I have a different perspective on the role of gender norms, meaning the current local cultural norms associated with each sex.

Many think that by adopting cross-sex gender norms, trans people are endorsing those norms as having some independent sex-based reality, which is kind of insulting to those of us who think that everyone should be free to be GNC if they want to be.

I think that trans people do it for a different reason. They think they belong in the opposite-sex club and they see adopting its gender norms as the price of admission, as well as a disguise which will force people to treat them as a person of that sex.

Your AMAer is fooling herself if she thinks she naturally epitomises feminine gender norms. She can wear pink if she wants, but she's unlikely to want the drudgery, danger and powerlessness of the average woman's life, and she's as likely as the next man to have those psychological traits that are genuinely sex-linked, like aggressiveness.

Going back to the OP's questions, I think they need to answered piece by piece.

And to answer them we first need to define our terms (something the TRA side is frequently reluctant to do).

So, some definitions.

Sex. The biological differences that divide humans (and all mammals, and many other animals) into 2 reproductive classes. These are encoded into every cell of our bodies and cannot be changed. There is male and female, and everyone is one or the other.

Some people have medical conditions that affect the expression of 1 or more sex-linked characteristics, but that doesn’t make them either a different sex or an 'in between' sex.

Some of the differences between the sexes are obvious - penis or vagina, testicle or ovary. Some are less obvious- proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibres, how oestrogen affects immune response. Some characteristics are on a spectrum (height for example - on average men are taller than women; but there is a ranglenof heights for both and there is overlap - some short men are shorter than some tall women), but that doesn't mean sex itself is a spectrum.

Gender. A grammatical thing we can ignore for this discussion. Also a social concept that codes some behaviours, traits, interests, roles, fashion choices etc as either male or female and expects people of each sex to follow the relevant set of 'rules'. These rules are almost infinitely variable through time and space, but almost always include at least some components that disadvantage women.

Gender identity. The idea that gender is not simply* *an external social construct but also some sort of intangible inner reality that you can 'have' rather than an external concept imposed on you And - for those who believe in trans gender identities - this inner sense of a sex-based concept can be other than the one matching your actual sex. (It's a logical fail, on that point - as set out above by popebishop).

Dysphoria/dysmorphia Often used interchangeably, but actually different things - '-phoria' relates to feelings (as in 'euphoria'), '-morphia' to shape (as in 'metamorphosis').

So gender dysphoria is being unhappy with your 'sex/gender/gender identity' in general (or with the contradictions inherent in the concept of both attaching gender to sex and wanting to do/be 'other sex' things).

Gender dysmorphia logically doesn't exist - gender doesn't have a 'shape'. However, body dysmorphia can attach itself to sex-differentiated aspects of the body.

That's quite a long post so I'll do the questions as a separate one.

Generally I'm of the opinion that what other adults choose to believe about themselves, how they choose to live their life, the choices they make, what substances they put in their body and what bits about their body they feel compelled to change and how they present themselves to the world is entirely up to them.

on a personal interaction level with another individual I'm only bothered when the other person's choices or actions affect me. Whether that be, for example, a priest insisting I believe in his God, a guy who hasn't washed for a week stood behind me in a queue assaulting my olfactory organs, a person who is driving so fast they can't brake in time and crash into the back of my car, or a man with the inner feeling he is a woman being put in a prison cell with me.

To answer your original questions:

do you accept that some people firmly believe they are born in the 'wrong' body

Yes. But I also think they should be helped to understand you can't be born in the wrong body. Your body is your body. You can do all sorts of things to it, but at the end of it all its still your body.

a right to live as the other sex

No one can live as the opposite sex. You can only live as the sex your chromosomes are. You can 'present' yourself to the world in whatever way you wish, but no one has a 'right ' to live as the other sex as that is impossible.

XY people are more powerful and dangerous, and I assume that most here are XX people to whom GI is a threat irl. I for one do see early transitioning females as more of a MH problem and very worrying - not to say I don't also feel sorry for small boys who get transitioned. What are their parents thinking?

Allthegoodnamesarechosen said: 'Secondly, that XY people are just more…..important.'

A transman (female) in a male space just doesn't have the same potential danger to the men in there as a transwoman (male) in a female space potentially has to the women in there. It's that pesky reality of the biological differences between the sexes again.

Do TM film themselves masterbating in the mens loos in the same way that TW do?

Do TM destroy mens sport the way that TW in female sport does?

I think a big part of the issue is that a trans XX harms one XX person, whereas a trans XY harms lots of XX people.

There was a AMA from a trans woman a few months ago. I tried to sum up their position and they agreed this was a good summary. I'll copy it:

"As this thread is running out of space, I'll just reiterate where we got to in terms of OP's beliefs and why OP is so fixated on 'men being like THIS, women being like THAT' - in terms of personality and their minds. (Copied from a previous post mid-thread). I make no comment on whether this makes OP a 'good' or 'bad'. It's rather a moot point in a way because I know it to be factually incorrect.

I think it lays out what a lot of people sort of believe but very few will outright say. Gender stereotypes persist and affect people's entire lives and identities."

You acknowledge (I think) that there are male and female bodies. You believe there is an incredibly strong, almost one-to-one correlation, throughout all of humanity with having a female body and having some sort of checklist of psychological traits (and with a male body and 'male mind' traits). You have also referred to "the way they feel about themselves and wish to live" without giving any more information on what this actually means.

You haven't said on what data you have concluded this, or even given a list of these traits other than "men are more competitive and rational" and "like to be assertive and in charge of things", and women are more "cooperative, empathic and emotional, more likely to to be kind and take a supporting role" - or said how you would measure them, or what it means if someone's ability/personality changes over time, or what even it means to 'be emotional'.

Let's say you think female people are 'above average' on these traits and there is therefore a distinct gap between how male people do on these and how female people do (so you wouldn't really see any overlap, because you claim that the traits are what distinguishes a 'male mind' or 'female mind'.)

You acknowledge there are 'some outliers' - males and females whose mind doesn't 'match' your list of traits. How many, we cannot know, but presumably millions worldwide.

Those with 'woman mind' traits are women, and this includes male people with those traits.

Those with 'man mind traits' are men, and this includes female people.

The fact that millions of female people can have 'man minds' does not suggest to you that in fact psychological traits can present equally in both sexes, but you conclude instead that their bodies are the wrong sex for their mind.

Based on this alone, you believe that 'man mind' people should be treated as male in all situations bar a very few, and same for women minds being treated as female. Bear in mind you say as a woman you are less rational than 50% of the population yet think it is fine to advocate for both sexes on this.

You think that the female body is a visual cue that the person has 'woman traits' and so appearing as a female, or taking on some female physical or social factors like she/her pronouns, female names, gendered clothing etc, tells society that 'this person has a woman mind and must be treated as such', hence your linking of appearance and psychological traits.

@Allthegoodnamesarechosen possibly because many XY people don't bother "applying" to do so... that's a lot like asking permission!