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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

"Trans people have always been here!"

208 replies

GoldenBracelet · 09/12/2025 18:49

God I'm tired of reading "Trans people have always been here!", like it's some kind of unarguable gotcha 🙄

Yes, there have always been men who think they are women.
No, they have never been women.

See also women who think they're men.

OP posts:
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FlirtsWithRhinos · 09/12/2025 23:33

Aisha176 · 09/12/2025 23:29

They have the equal access to male single sex provisions the same as all other male people if they are male. And the same for female people. In addition, there are many places providing mixed sex access single sex provisions too.

They don't identify with their sex though so for them it's problematic.

"There are also plenty of other groups who would like to access medical treatment that is not funded by the NHS. However, the treatment you describe has also been shown to have poor quality evidence of improving the outcome for children. I think you claim of discrimination on grounds of health care is flawed."

For them & experts globally, their health care is necessary to their psychological wellbeing so being deprived of it is discriminatory .

I experience a society that accepts the neo-sexist idea that "a woman" is a type of personality as problematic and bad for my psychological well-being.

GoldenBracelet · 09/12/2025 23:32

Aisha176 · 09/12/2025 23:29

They have the equal access to male single sex provisions the same as all other male people if they are male. And the same for female people. In addition, there are many places providing mixed sex access single sex provisions too.

They don't identify with their sex though so for them it's problematic.

"There are also plenty of other groups who would like to access medical treatment that is not funded by the NHS. However, the treatment you describe has also been shown to have poor quality evidence of improving the outcome for children. I think you claim of discrimination on grounds of health care is flawed."

For them & experts globally, their health care is necessary to their psychological wellbeing so being deprived of it is discriminatory .

They don't identify with their sex though so for them it's problematic.

Oh dear, you're a bigot. They don't just identify as women, they are women!

OP posts:
Seethlaw · 09/12/2025 23:31

Aisha176 · 09/12/2025 23:24

Calling religiosity a psychological condition is not something everyone would agree on, but never mind.

My original post you quoted said "psychological condition/disposition".

"Yes, legally, that's what "rights" are about: the law. And let's stick to the UK. What rights don't trans people have in the UK, that other people have?"

They are discriminated against in terms of access to health care & are restricted to access of public toilets.

They are discriminated against in terms of access to health care & are restricted to access of public toilets.

How so? Doctors cannot refuse to see them because they are trans. Hospitals cannot turn them away because they are trans. They can't be refused treatments for illnesses because they are trans. So how exactly are they discriminated against in terms of access to health care?

As for toilets: they have exactly the same rights as other people: the right to use the toilets according to their sex. That they don't want to do so is not the law's problem.

Aisha176 · 09/12/2025 23:29

Helleofabore · 09/12/2025 23:25

They are not restricted from public toilets though.

They have the equal access to male single sex provisions the same as all other male people if they are male. And the same for female people. In addition, there are many places providing mixed sex access single sex provisions too.

There are also plenty of other groups who would like to access medical treatment that is not funded by the NHS. However, the treatment you describe has also been shown to have poor quality evidence of improving the outcome for children. I think you claim of discrimination on grounds of health care is flawed.

They have the equal access to male single sex provisions the same as all other male people if they are male. And the same for female people. In addition, there are many places providing mixed sex access single sex provisions too.

They don't identify with their sex though so for them it's problematic.

"There are also plenty of other groups who would like to access medical treatment that is not funded by the NHS. However, the treatment you describe has also been shown to have poor quality evidence of improving the outcome for children. I think you claim of discrimination on grounds of health care is flawed."

For them & experts globally, their health care is necessary to their psychological wellbeing so being deprived of it is discriminatory .

GoldenBracelet · 09/12/2025 23:29

Aisha176 · 09/12/2025 23:24

Calling religiosity a psychological condition is not something everyone would agree on, but never mind.

My original post you quoted said "psychological condition/disposition".

"Yes, legally, that's what "rights" are about: the law. And let's stick to the UK. What rights don't trans people have in the UK, that other people have?"

They are discriminated against in terms of access to health care & are restricted to access of public toilets.

They are discriminated against in terms of access to health care & are restricted to access of public toilets.

Really? They can't go to the doctor, or go to a public toilet?

OP posts:
Helleofabore · 09/12/2025 23:25

Aisha176 · 09/12/2025 23:16

I was referring to anti discrimination laws.

Are trans people still discriminated against in the UK? They are restricted from access to health care & public toilets.

Edited

They are not restricted from public toilets though.

They have the equal access to male single sex provisions the same as all other male people if they are male. And the same for female people. In addition, there are many places providing mixed sex access single sex provisions too.

There are also plenty of other groups who would like to access medical treatment that is not funded by the NHS. However, the treatment you describe has also been shown to have poor quality evidence of improving the outcome for children. I think you claim of discrimination on grounds of health care is flawed.

Aisha176 · 09/12/2025 23:24

Seethlaw · 09/12/2025 23:19

Anti discrimination of Religious beliefs & freedom of religion.

Calling religiosity a psychological condition is not something everyone would agree on, but never mind. What matters far more is that as you say, the extent of the legal accommodations religious people receive is anti-discrimination. They don't have extra rights. Well, trans people also benefit from anti-discrimination laws, but they want extra rights. Big difference.

Legally? That varies between countries.

Yes, legally, that's what "rights" are about: the law. And let's stick to the UK. What rights don't trans people have in the UK, that other people have?

Calling religiosity a psychological condition is not something everyone would agree on, but never mind.

My original post you quoted said "psychological condition/disposition".

"Yes, legally, that's what "rights" are about: the law. And let's stick to the UK. What rights don't trans people have in the UK, that other people have?"

They are discriminated against in terms of access to health care & are restricted to access of public toilets.

catontheironingboard · 09/12/2025 23:23

It’s no accident that historically the appearance of an idea of “trans” (sexual or gender or anything else), from first around the 1930s onwards but mainly from the 1950s, is completely coextensive with two things:

  • women’s legal rights; and
  • the development of modern surgery/antibiotics.

Pretty much all instances of “trans” people that gender ideologists lay a claim to that were documented before 1900 were actually homosexual men and women, living at a time when sexual orientation was understood as inseparable from sex and sex roles, and wanting to be the other sex was thought of as evidence of homosexuality, not “gender dysphoria”. Gay and autogynephilic men might have played at dressing up in women’s clothes; but there was no appeal to “living as a woman” in eras where that meant a very severe loss of autonomy, money, agency and legal rights.

“Transsexual”, as something rooted in a desire for surgical alterations of the body, also did not exist as anything other than pure fantasy before the era of modern surgery and antibiotics. It’s almost impossible for us to think ourselves back into a time where routine, safe surgery didn’t exist. Surgery was minimal, noninvasive or only in extremis before modern medicine (and, crucially, antibiotics), made infection and complications generally rare.

People might have fantasised about turning themselves into the opposite sex - Joyce has Leopold Bloom do this in a satirical section on Havelock Ellis and Kraft-Ebing in Ulysses - but it remained a fantasy, because complex body-altering plastic surgery simply did not exist then. They weren’t “trans” in the contemporary sense, because the idea of being one “gender” trapped in a different sex also simply didn’t exist. People might even have wished quite hard that they had been born the opposite sex: but until very recently in history this wish was on the level of any other impossible wish — like; I wish I had been born tall, or rich, or possessed of great beauty or good fortune — ie. it remained merely a desire/fantasy.

It would have made as much sense to someone in 1820 to say that a man was “really” a woman trapped in a man’s body, as to say that the King secretly thought he was spiritually a pauper trapped in the body of a monarch; or that Adam Smith thought he was a Frenchman trapped in the body of a Scot.

The reason you don’t see actual historical evidence of “trans people always having been there” is that for most of history it simply didn’t register as an idea that was any more than merely fantastical or metaphorical. Aside from gay men, a very few lesbian women, and women who didn’t much like their social role as chattels, there isn’t much of any evidence in history of “trans” anything at all.

Helleofabore · 09/12/2025 23:20

TempestTost · 09/12/2025 23:13

You know, I agree with you basically, but it's maybe worth remembering that id pol is an American creation, and its supporters very often do think that people should have additional rights/privileges on the basis of things like race. For example weighting university admissions according to race.

So maybe it seems similar to that for people who buy into that way of thinking.

I hear you.

How ever, those weightings are to allow for equitable outcomes to give equal opportunity. They ‘could’ be considered additional I guess, but the outcome is supposed to be equal.

I would say this doesn’t apply to a male person not only having access to their own single se provision but demanding access to the female single sex provision. Because they already have access to their own single sex provision established. That is equal and equitable as an outcome, if you see what I mean.

Seethlaw · 09/12/2025 23:19

Aisha176 · 09/12/2025 23:12

Which psychological conditions does society make legal accommodations for?

Anti discrimination of Religious beliefs & freedom of religion.

Which rights don't trans people have, that other people have?

Legally? That varies between countries. For some western countries its access to basic amenities without fear of abuse & access to health care.

Anti discrimination of Religious beliefs & freedom of religion.

Calling religiosity a psychological condition is not something everyone would agree on, but never mind. What matters far more is that as you say, the extent of the legal accommodations religious people receive is anti-discrimination. They don't have extra rights. Well, trans people also benefit from anti-discrimination laws, but they want extra rights. Big difference.

Legally? That varies between countries.

Yes, legally, that's what "rights" are about: the law. And let's stick to the UK. What rights don't trans people have in the UK, that other people have?

Runnersandtoms · 09/12/2025 23:19

GoldenBracelet · 09/12/2025 19:21

Yes, transvestites have been co-opted. Wasn't there a MN thread recently about Where have all the transvestites gone?

Some transvestites have changed their tune. Eg Eddie Izzard was known as a man who enjoyed wearing stereotypically female clothing. He never claimed not to be a man. He said 'they're not women's clothes, they're mine, I bought them.' I was totally fine with that. Liked him as a comedian. No issue with anyone wearing whatever they like.
.
However now this trend has given him permission to claim he is actually a woman. (At least some of the time!) This I am very much not okay with.

Aisha176 · 09/12/2025 23:16

Helleofabore · 09/12/2025 22:59

The situation currently with women’s rights is not actually comparative to those examples. ’people of colour, women & gay people’ wanted, and rightly, equal opportunities and equitable outcomes when compared to other races, men and heterosexual people.

Some of those people with transgender identities are demanding that they get additional privileges compared to other people. They want not just access to the opportunities and services for their own sex, but also for the opposite sex. They also have demanded that they are treated as something they are materially not as they are not the opposite sex, or no sex in the case of non-binary people.

This group of people already have access to same rights as everyone else in the UK. Unlike the groups you referred to in the past.

I was referring to anti discrimination laws.

Are trans people still discriminated against in the UK? They are restricted from access to health care & public toilets.

TempestTost · 09/12/2025 23:13

Helleofabore · 09/12/2025 22:59

The situation currently with women’s rights is not actually comparative to those examples. ’people of colour, women & gay people’ wanted, and rightly, equal opportunities and equitable outcomes when compared to other races, men and heterosexual people.

Some of those people with transgender identities are demanding that they get additional privileges compared to other people. They want not just access to the opportunities and services for their own sex, but also for the opposite sex. They also have demanded that they are treated as something they are materially not as they are not the opposite sex, or no sex in the case of non-binary people.

This group of people already have access to same rights as everyone else in the UK. Unlike the groups you referred to in the past.

You know, I agree with you basically, but it's maybe worth remembering that id pol is an American creation, and its supporters very often do think that people should have additional rights/privileges on the basis of things like race. For example weighting university admissions according to race.

So maybe it seems similar to that for people who buy into that way of thinking.

Aisha176 · 09/12/2025 23:12

Seethlaw · 09/12/2025 21:43

Which psychological conditions does society make legal accommodations for?

Which rights don't trans people have, that other people have?

Which psychological conditions does society make legal accommodations for?

Anti discrimination of Religious beliefs & freedom of religion.

Which rights don't trans people have, that other people have?

Legally? That varies between countries. For some western countries its access to basic amenities without fear of abuse & access to health care.

TempestTost · 09/12/2025 23:10

I am not convinced it's even true.

I don't think the differernt examples of people "living as" the other sex historically were ever actually believing they were the other sex, nor were other people in those societies. And the social rules for them, in every instance I have seen, were differernt.

But also - these categories do not seem to exist in every society. And are we really saying that Gruk the caveman was living as a woman back in the paleolithic? We don't know, of course, but it seems unlikely for a host of reasons.

I think this phrase is borrowing from the same claim about homosexuality, hoping people won't challenge it seriously. It's not even as clear cut with sexuality as some seem to believe, that variations appear in every human society. And it's less so with third gender categories.

Helleofabore · 09/12/2025 22:59

Aisha176 · 09/12/2025 21:28

Sure, just like the way people of colour, women & gay people insisted society & the law must change to accommodate them as self determination being a universal human requirement demands.

The situation currently with women’s rights is not actually comparative to those examples. ’people of colour, women & gay people’ wanted, and rightly, equal opportunities and equitable outcomes when compared to other races, men and heterosexual people.

Some of those people with transgender identities are demanding that they get additional privileges compared to other people. They want not just access to the opportunities and services for their own sex, but also for the opposite sex. They also have demanded that they are treated as something they are materially not as they are not the opposite sex, or no sex in the case of non-binary people.

This group of people already have access to same rights as everyone else in the UK. Unlike the groups you referred to in the past.

FragilityOfCups · 09/12/2025 22:44

Most people think that when you say "trans person" you mean what would have previously been called a transsexual - someone that wants to be the opposite sex and have others see them as such.

Whereas the definition now includes those with the belief that there are gender identities, that each of these either matches or doesn't match a sex, and that any mismatch (or no gender) makes you transgender.

What a gender identity is isn't clear - the characteristics that you believe everyone in one sex to have and none in the other; the desire to be one or the other sex or neither, various traits relating to cultural masculinity or femininity and nothing to do with the body, etc etc.

Either way you have these people, the people who don't have a gender identity, the old-school TSs and many others now under the name of "trans".

Burntt · 09/12/2025 22:27

What makes me angry about this is they are trying to erase some amazing women from history. There was the woman who pretended to be a man to be a dr Margaret Anne Bulkley who went by James Barry- her Wikipedia page claims she was hermapredite. I’ve seen it claimed Joan of arc was trans. These were women limited in what they could do in their time because they were women, they dressed as men to achieve great things as they couldn’t achieve these things female. But no woman can’t have impressive history, just like all the science breakthroughs stolen from us by men these woman had to have really been men to make such achievements. Boils my blood

Seethlaw · 09/12/2025 22:27

eatfigs · 09/12/2025 21:55

https://bprice.substack.com/p/trans-is-something-we-made-up

I found this analysis of "trans" as a cultural phenomenon to be a compelling read.

From this analysis:

"People are conscious of the way they are classified, and they alter their behavior and self-conceptions in response to their classification."

Ooh boy, does that speak to me!

I've always had a "mental map" of my body as that of a male - but!

When I was 6, my mother enrolled us into a fundamentalist Christian church, where I was actively endoctrinated into understanding that, "I'm a girl, I will grow up to be a young woman, then a woman who will get married to a man and have babies." Well, okay then. I mixed that and my self-perception and came out with, "I'm a tomboy!" Worked well enough in that environment.

Years passed. I left the church. Later I cut contact with my mother - at which point I asked myself, "What am I, if I don't have to be what my mother wanted me to be?" Immediately, the answer came: "First things first: I'm a man!" - because my mental map hadn't changed.

But it's only because "transsexual" is described precisely as "a man in a female body" in our culture that I then took on that identity. If it were something else, some other concept, that were associated with my feeling, I would have adopted that other concept instead.

So yeah, that really speaks to me as a trans person.

Jimmyneutronsforehead · 09/12/2025 22:26

Greyskybluesky · 09/12/2025 22:20

Well, Christmas is coming @Jimmyneutronsforehead so why not buy them an Adult Human Female t-shirt each

Aha, I have some plain tote bags myself and the meals to print and stick vinyl on them and I had considered doing an adult human female with Pete the Plumber on them.

My brother keeps having these moments where he almost peaks, almost. He's 10 years younger than me, so only a young adult, and I keep trying to cut him some slack because at 20 I was very impressionable too, but I sometimes think Pete the plumber might land really well.

Greyskybluesky · 09/12/2025 22:20

Well, Christmas is coming @Jimmyneutronsforehead so why not buy them an Adult Human Female t-shirt each

MarvellousMonsters · 09/12/2025 22:18

OttersMayHaveShifted · 09/12/2025 19:25

Yes, it is usually a non-gotcha whuch follows the claim that people are denying/debating trans people's existence. Ummm nope. We know you exist. That doesn't mean we believe you can change sex.

and:

”I think TRAs really believe that GC people deny that trans people exist.”

Exactly, this is the argument that makes no sense to me. No one denies that people with dysphoria or who didn’t ‘fit’ the gender stereotypes, or who got a thrill from cross dressing, exist. Of course they exist. It’s such a silly thing to say.

We are denying the delusion that anyone can change sex, or that you can be born in the ‘wrong body’. Being a woman isn’t a feeling, it’s a biological reality.

Jimmyneutronsforehead · 09/12/2025 22:05

MarieDeGournay · 09/12/2025 21:58

Not only have transgender people not always been here - the concept and the word are recent - but they also rewrite history shamelessly to falsify the record.

Take the Stonewall Riots in NYC in 1969, taken as the starting point for the modern lesbian and gay movement - transpeople claim that it was started by 'transwomen'. A previous poster referenced Marsha P Johnson, who was a gay man, not a transwoman. The men who frequented the Stonewall Bar were men. Gay men. They went there to meet other men.
There was a 'drag' subculture there, and some of the gay men were drag performers, and wore make-up, and referred to each other as 'she', but they were not claiming to be women.

One legend has it that it was actually a lesbian, Stormé DeLarverie, who started the famous riots, which is about as far from a trans-identifying man as you can get! But whoever started the Stonewall Riots, one thing is sure: it was not a transwoman.

The trans movement co-opted the Stonewall Riots, and covered the actual bar with trans flags, which was deeply offensive to the lesbian and gay community for whom it was an important location.
[They have since been removed, I'm glad to say].

An even more shameless example was the photoshopping of a trans slogan onto the photo of the first lesbian and gay march in Ireland in 1983, which was in memory of a murdered gay man.

Apart from the obvious anachronism - 'transgender' didn't exist in 1983- the disrespect shown to the murdered man and his family and friends by hijacking this memorial event is disgusting.

I'm sure others can come up with examples of TRAs rewriting and falsifying history to put trans in where it never was, to try to back up the 'trans people have always been here' claim.

Adding the T to LGB has exacerbated this: anything or anybody lesbian, gay, or bisexual, even from centuries ago, is now anachronistically labelled 'LGBT.'

LGB✂T, ASAP, in the interests of historical accuracy, as well as everything else!

Ah, ah but you're forgetting the two spirit indigenous people's across the pre-colonial America's.

This keeps getting shoved down my throat by DB and I am colonialist for erasing them from history. 🙄

Jimmyneutronsforehead · 09/12/2025 22:01

GoldenBracelet · 09/12/2025 19:36

Don't forget:

No debate!
Be kind!

DB's partner recently did a craft fair and printed loads of tote bags saying "save trans kids"

It made me pause for a minute, because I agree with the sentiment, but probably not the execution that the slogan is trying to portray.

I'd love to save trans kids from an ideology that they were born in the wrong body, from puberty blockers and from irreversible surgery. I didn't say anything though incase I got shot.

MarieDeGournay · 09/12/2025 21:58

Not only have transgender people not always been here - the concept and the word are recent - but they also rewrite history shamelessly to falsify the record.

Take the Stonewall Riots in NYC in 1969, taken as the starting point for the modern lesbian and gay movement - transpeople claim that it was started by 'transwomen'. A previous poster referenced Marsha P Johnson, who was a gay man, not a transwoman. The men who frequented the Stonewall Bar were men. Gay men. They went there to meet other men.
There was a 'drag' subculture there, and some of the gay men were drag performers, and wore make-up, and referred to each other as 'she', but they were not claiming to be women.

One legend has it that it was actually a lesbian, Stormé DeLarverie, who started the famous riots, which is about as far from a trans-identifying man as you can get! But whoever started the Stonewall Riots, one thing is sure: it was not a transwoman.

The trans movement co-opted the Stonewall Riots, and covered the actual bar with trans flags, which was deeply offensive to the lesbian and gay community for whom it was an important location.
[They have since been removed, I'm glad to say].

An even more shameless example was the photoshopping of a trans slogan onto the photo of the first lesbian and gay march in Ireland in 1983, which was in memory of a murdered gay man.

Apart from the obvious anachronism - 'transgender' didn't exist in 1983- the disrespect shown to the murdered man and his family and friends by hijacking this memorial event is disgusting.

I'm sure others can come up with examples of TRAs rewriting and falsifying history to put trans in where it never was, to try to back up the 'trans people have always been here' claim.

Adding the T to LGB has exacerbated this: anything or anybody lesbian, gay, or bisexual, even from centuries ago, is now anachronistically labelled 'LGBT.'

LGB✂T, ASAP, in the interests of historical accuracy, as well as everything else!

"Trans people have always been here!"
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