Trans sibling in law

If it’s an internalisation of social and cultural structure, and we are all deeply affected by how society genders us, then how can a man possibly have a gender identity of “woman”, if he’s never been subject to being gendered as such? He presumably also has an inescapable gender identity, formed over years of life, as a man. If gender identity is real, how is it possible for him to set aside the one he already has (which is also real), and instantly acquire another that he hasn’t been socialised into?

In your model, there’s actually less room for individuals to exist outside the gendered structures of the social world, no?

If it changes what an apple is, you no longer have a word to describe what you are.

Fair enough, thanks for pointing it out.

Someone being a banana apple doesn't change if I’m an apple though, does it.

They’re not changing my fruit status, or telling me I have to be something else.

I’d like to think that my apple skin is a bit thicker than being affected by that anyway.

But we don't share any kind of identity with trans women.

The only thing we have in common is that we are human.

I have more in common with women, trans men, and regular men than I do with trans women.

Honestly, I think that this gets us close to the truth about why people persist in believing this shite. We need to believe that we aren't like other animals, and that our lives have some greater meaning.

For much of human history our lives have been organised around religion. In most mainstream religions, including Christianity, people are considered to be superior to animals. God created man in his own image to rule over the animal kingdom and all of that.

Religion also provided a justification for the belief that we all have souls that are distinct from our bodies; souls which survive after the death of our earthly bodies and give us the possibility of eternal life.

Religion also gave us communities to belong to. People who weren't necessarily blood relatives but could be relied on for practical and emotional support.

Now all of that has largely gone out of the window and we are left with every man/woman for him/herself, no village to rely on, just a brief and in most cases unextraordinary life during which we eat, sleep, shit and mate like animals, and then one day we die and our bodies return to the earth one way or another.

No wonder a new religion based on gendered souls and a brand new rainbow family has taken hold.

Correct, that’s exactly what I believe. That gender identity is a real thing that is created by internalisation of societal and cultural structure, that none of us can fully escape that, and that I am the physical expression of that identity.

I’m not for example “a daughter,” I’m my mother’s daughter, and that has a difference in my socialisation and identity that you can’t share because you’re someone else’s.

The difference, as you point out, is that I believe it’s real and others don’t.

Because I believe it to be real and not imaginary, I also believe that people of either sex can have a different gender identity and expression. Where they come from, I’ve no way of knowing because they’re personal and individual. I also wouldn’t ask someone to explain themselves.

In my day to day, I would (and do) use pronouns as requested, and have never been either offended by someone stating their gender ID or felt like it affected mine in anyway. You telling me you’re anything, doesn’t change who I am, as far as I see it. I don’t feel threatened by it.

I obviously acknowledge that legal systems can’t be that ambiguous, and don’t pull random trans women off the street into bathrooms, for example. But on a personal level, I’m not bothered if they go in them. That’s not the law, it’s a personal view.

Why is "he your brother in law now"? What has actually changed?

You're not using that analogy right.

Its a banana identifying as an apple. You're still an apple, but but the banana now wants all the rights of a banana AND to be given the same rights as you, as an apple.

The want to have the banana skin and the apple core. It's not possible and it's harming the apples.

Genderists of both sexes (note, only two are available) want the term for an adult human female ring fenced for “people who share a woman identity” because some sexist men who know nothing about being a woman and felt alienated by the idea of being a man fancied calling themselves women. It’s not like boring actual female people need the word or anything, anyway who cares if they do?

I’ve wondered how TRAs suggest we should differentiate between female and male animals of any other species.

The word female can apply to any species.

I'm a female human, not a female horse.

Even though I might have been referring to the woman?

So female bovines get to use a special word but not female humans

No, it’s my questions about identity that I was hoping for a response on (posted upthread). My question is about how you conceive of identity as the internal reflection or accumulation of gendered socialisation. That’s not very dissimilar to what most “GC” feminists would argue. Essentially, you’re suggesting that gender identity is an internal self-image formed out of gender as a social process. You presumably argue that gender identity is a real thing, created from the internalisation of social experience. “GC” feminists might argue instead that gender identity is an illusion: it’s a fantasy of the self created by the internalisation of social experience.

In both cases, it still doesn’t really matter whether gender identity is social and real, or social and illusory. The question is, how can a man be said to have a “woman” gender identity in either case?

I’d probably just say cow, if I meant cow.

It can also be taken away, but if/when it is, I’ll react then rather than in advance.

Its much harder to get back rights that have been taken away than it is to retain the rights you already have.

Of course I don’t think all women have the same freedoms, same priorities and same experience.

It isn’t either 1930 or 1972.

It can also be taken away, but if/when it is, I’ll react then rather than in advance.

I don’t see trans people as a threat in that regard. Because to use an analogy from last night, someone else identifying as a banana doesn’t make me an apple. It changes nothing about who or what I am.

Not all of them directly to you, however as there are quite a few responses along similar themes what I’m trying to do is answer those themes, in the (perhaps vain) hope that other people who said the same thing will see them.

I can see, for example, that you asked about the victim comment I made. I have explained that, in terms of the group efforts (which a thread yesterday saying “here’s where we took the piss out of someone confirm) and the constant questions of the exact same type by the same people, and the laughing amongst each other.

The replies around that may have been directed at other posters who had said the same thing, or asked the same thing, but I did try to clarify. It doesn’t seem to make sense to say the same answers repeatedly to the various people who ask those questions.

I’m still not getting a reply to my questions 😟

I agree, people can write all the bollocks essays about how womanhood is a shimmering ineffable feeling that they like, at uni, but it doesn’t mean anything in the real world. And sense is returning to law and policy.

I find the photos of women smiling walking in the park in short sleeves and skirts in Kabul and Tehran absolutely chilling.

Btw we are witnessing another demonstration of trying to use language to control debate and society.

A reminder.
The only definitions that matter in practice are legal ones. All others are waffle poppycock.

Take a look at Kabul, for instance, in the 70s, and today.

The legal illiteracy that accompanies it, is even more baffling in this context because it relies on going from a supposedly intellectual position to one that's incoherent, unworkable and makes no sense because 'be kind'. Meanwhile the very people most affected by gender ID - vulnerable women and children aren't treated kindly, concerns about them are dismissed as irrelevant and sex is redefined as a social construction!

And I'm going to re-post this point too.

The law is kind of relevant to discussions about vulnerable individuals and definitions of sex under the law which offer vulnerable individuals various protections.

(Ironically this also covers protections for transpeople).

We don't get to forget the law and the ramifications of law and how the law affects us if the law refers to SEX and NOT gender or wishy washy concepts of who we think we are and what our inner true identity is.

To put bluntly: The law couldn't give a fuck if you think you are not a human and instead are a fairy. Suggestions that the law and how it defines sex doesn't apply to you starts to make you sound like a bloody Freeman of the Land crackpot.

What we all have the freedom to do, however, is decide the extent to which that impacts you or matters to you on a personal level

Do you think all women have this everywhere?

Do you think women had this freedom in 1930? 1972?

Do you think this freedom can’t be taken away?