Continuation of Polypostwonder thread

On a lighter note, PPW, before signing out again for a while... you've earned your username!

“Biology matters, but it doesn't.“

Is this a reference to the difference between purpose of the word ‘female’ for things like definition and them concepts such as illegitimate discrimination?

If so, it really isn’t not that hard to understand.

Biology matters for the definition of the sex category boundaries. This is uncontroversial really and has been established for millennia. It is only because some people wish to destabilise this definition and the category boundaries using philosophical theory that there is even questions around this.

Then there are the situations where biology does not matter.

That is where there is no one correct behaviour, interest or opinion for a female person to have to fit that category of female human. This is also not confusing.

And for many purposes female people cannot be discriminated against for being female such as in
employment. There ARE legitimate roles that discriminate against women but where it is not legitimate ‘sex category does not matter’.

So claiming that there is contradiction such as saying “Biology matters, but it doesn't”, is actually just showing the person making the statement either doesn’t understand the issue, or maybe they are trying to discredit the significant points being made by pretending that there is a lack of coherence and the discrepancy is due to hatred or something else.

At least some Islamic states, Iran for instance, are all for gay men being castrated and calling themselves women, because in the mind of the religious fundamentalists that means they're no longer gay.

So I don't think acceptance in such states means quite what the OP thinks it does.

Edit: I don't think such states think very much about women other than that they are not-men.

My husband joined me on a trip to Qatar once. If the gender critical beliefs were reality, our experience would have been much different.

I'll just respond to this one, too. I think one of the issues we're facing is that "gender critical" doesn't quite encompass the single-minded certainty your use of it suggests. In terms of feminists, it's a grass-roots movement encompassing all political classes and leanings. It ranges from the questioning (as you may call it!) to the moderate to the more hardline. From the sympathetic and cautious to the cynical and furious. And on those spectrums, it touches on every possibility inbetween. And all that's before you turn to the overlap with ideologies and allegiances many (most?) gender critical feminists find actively distasteful - yes, we share some beliefs with Christian fundamentalists: biology is real, for example. No, we don't share many (any?) more. And no, that overlap is no more a moral stain on us, than agreeing with Trump that the sky is often blue would be!

I mean, surely you can see that even from the range of voices and approaches in this thread!

As such, when you say, "if the gender critical beliefs were reality", which beliefs do you mean?!

It's true that many on this thread have expressed scepticism about your passing. Some haven't, though. And almost all have expressed their scepticism in a way that acknowledges that you may well in some / many / almost all contexts - just not all. I've not commented on this: 1) I just don't know enough about what conditions and treatments like those you describe may lead to and 2) I don't like to use the more personal in my posts - neither about my life, nor yours!

So, if, as I understand above, you're saying that you being treated as a woman in Qatar on the basis of your outward appearance somehow invalidates the whole of gender critical thought... it simply doesn't. While I understand, again, how intensely personal and important to you that experience was (and why), on a wider, ethical scale, it does feel rather like another get-out that avoids the more universally gender-critical issues in my post above.

Because whatever the other variations across the gender critical feminist movement as regards eg. passing, I can guarantee, 110%, that each and every member of it, regardless of political leaning, personal views or posting style, will recognise the critical importance of the four questions I post above.

I'd be really interested in your responses to them.

He knows he didn't change sex otherwise why lie to all family and friends?

Dr Hrfrrrr

experientially prove that there is no actual requirement for 'sex' in the gender critical sense, to drive the process. Biology matters, but it doesn't.

OK, I'm going to really try to address just this bit, by breaking it down.

Your "no requirement" seems to be based on your self-perception, and others' perceptions of you in your ability to pass.

However, in this context, the choice of "requirement" is curious. It suggests that you're extrapolating from your personal experience some kind of rule or necessity: presumably that, by logical extension, there's no "requirement" for 'woman" to be sex-based.

I do see what you mean in a sense, and I saw it the first time you made this argument. I think many of us do, and some - including me - sympathise with it, too. In the sense in which you're writing, this is a valid point.

But it simply ignores, time and time and time again, the central human rights question we're asking.

What I'm desperately curious to have is not further justifications of the above, which focusses on you and your experience of "woman", but explanations of the below, which addresses a wider human rights issue. Basically, my questions would be:

Practical Need

1. Do you believe that adult human females retain any practical need at all for a word with which to distinguish themselves as a demographic sharing* certain commonalities and associated challenges?

*with inevitable exceptions (eg. illness, DSDs, variability across ages etc. etc. etc.) - please let's assume we're all grown-ups and can acknowledge this as self-evident!

2. If not, could you explain why such an (unusually consistent, in biological terms) universal pattern of shared practical need (eg. periods, a capacity - or, yes indeed, a perceived capacity for - pregnancy, menopause, relative physical vulnerability etc.) is insufficient to justify retaining a noun for this particular class of human?

Ethical Rights

3. Do you believe that adult human females still have any right to a word to distinguish themselves in language and law (particularly given that a significant proportion globally have made their wish for this clear, including taking this to the highest courts in several lands)

4. If not, on what definitive, democratic basis (beyond your own personal, anecdotal impressions of probable popular opinion), would you absolutely, confidently deny them this right?

Well yes. Your chromosomes determine which sex you develop into, but do not define it, it’s determined by which gamete your phenotype develops to support.

You know this, you know the difference between determination and definition so why pretend not to?

I’d not believe it even then. Sex refers to which sort of gamete your phenotype is organised to support, so he’d still be a man.

Thanks for the detailed response, PPW, but to be honest, I'm struggling with it just a paragraphs or two in.

I'm referring to social construction.

I know!!! My response was predicated on knowing this!

Culture doesn't separate out individuals for 'special treatment' to the degree trans people or gender critical people apparently believe.

I don't understand this. How could "culture" possibly "separate out individuals" for 'special treatment'"? What does this mean? Culture's an abstract concept used to describe wide-ranging commonalities in behaviour, belief etc. It has no direct relation to individuals in the sense you seem to use above. Are you using hyperbole, to make a rhetorical point? Or perhaps countering a belief you honestly think we have? Or yourself misunderstanding or misusing the word? or concept? of culture?

We are all floating in the same ocean and currents divide us based on the power structures in place, not to an idealised personally navigated pattern.

"Idealised personally navigated pattern" is similarly hard to understand - by "idealised", I think you must mean "ideal", in the sense of optimised personal preference, because "idealised" has a rather different meaning... but again I'm unsure. Fundamentally, though, you seem to be saying we're all influenced by culture again? If so, then again, I know that!!! Perhaps assume as a starting point that I understand this key concept. I'm not seeking oceanic metaphors (nice as yours actually is!), but rather just asking you to describe, clearly, the commonalities that suffice to define "woman" in "cultural" terms. AKA: what do we share culturally that, in your view, supersedes the 99(.9?)% universality of my period analogy?

I hope you don't mind the parsing above, but I want to show what I meant by the compounding of abstraction on abstraction, and ambiguity on ambiguity, in some of your replies, in the hope of something more definitive in future! We rarely get this level of sensible engagement from your perspective over here, and I genuinely want to understand better where you're coming from on a more holistic scale.

I think I am agreeing with you, and with many others, but because of gender critical beliefs, I am not permitted to own my experience in this space.

Following on from the above, I also think we have some potential for agreement, and find it frustrating that with clearer posting we could pin this down and really get into some interesting issues.

I don't entirely agree with the "not permitted", though. Posters have thanked you for your relation of your experiences, sympathised with you and responded to them. Many have also, it's true, expressed scepticism to a greater or lesser degree. I haven't, and am instead just asking you to move beyond the personal to debate in general terms as well.

As these are my thoughts on just the one paragraph, I may not respond much more (although, knowing me, probably will find it hard to resist when time permits!) I'll certainly read everything you wrote, though. I do respect your dogged engagement.

I'll be back (sans sinister Arnie connotations, though!)

Perhaps, but since there's little prospect of the practical question arising in your lifetime or mine, I'm more than happy to postpone considering that question until such a time as it is an actual possibility.

Here and now there is only one way to truly change sex, and that is to change what the word "sex" means. Which in truth changes nothing at all.

Not sure if you are willfully misunderstanding or simply that as a Gender Absolutist person you are too ideologicaly constrained to take in my point, but the issue is not whether you believe you changed sex (clearly you do) or even whether you factually changed sex (clearly not, unless one also changes what the word "sex" has always meant), it is that you believed your mind was of the opposite sex.

There are also persistent religious beliefs and cultural beliefs that affect perception and placement of people within philosophies

Indeed. Your Gender Absolutist beliefs being a case in point.

I simply believe that

1. biological sex is a fact
2. It has measurable consequences especially for female people
3. Women's lives exist in the intersection of our physical female body, the life experiences we have because of it and how we see and police ourselves as a result. Men, including trans identified men such as yourself, exist in valid but different ways.
4. Women matter enough to have an identity in society and law that does not include trans identifying men such as yourself.
5. We have both a moral right and an excellent practical case that the name for women (in my meaning of the word not yours) should be the same one we always had given that it's the name our history is written under and still the common meaning. I do not deny that recently well meaning people will add "oh, and trans women of course" but this is not their natural language of thought, it's a conscious overlay.
6. Trans people are experiencing something separate to being the opposite sex and should coin new terminology for it.

You may believe otherwise. That is your belief. However your belief firstly means rejecting at least one of the statements above, and that unavoidably puts you in a more sexist position.

As a woman in the original sense, the people whose identity you do not believe is valid, I am telling your identity claim devalues, depersonalises and humilates women. This I experience just as deeply as whatever it is you experience that you have usurped the word "woman" to name.

I appreciate your beliefs do not align with this uncomfortable truth, but it is nevertheless truth.

When you can get Crispr to cut your Y chromosome from every cell, then I will accept that you have changed sex.

Even if this were possible now, a substantial number of gender critical people would disagree with you.

It’s a lie to say you changed sex.

Did I believe I would change sex? Yes.
Did I change sex? Yes.
Is this sexist? This wasn't a question I was asking myself at the time.
Is this sexist? Asking the question of me now? Maybe? Does it matter now? In some theoretical sense? Can I do anything about it now? No. I believe there are people with strong opinions on the topic about how sex change and its current social heterogeneity affect members of sex classes. There are also persistent religious beliefs and cultural beliefs that affect perception and placement of people within philosophies.

There's that film 'the man with two brains' but apart from that....

There is no physical way possible for anyone’s brain to be in the ‘wrong body’.

The philosophical argument is deeper. My thoughts are not deeper than yours.

Medical treatment validated your sexist beliefs. Of course you feel happier.

I'd feel happier if my financial dysphoria was indulged with other people's money.

You feel happier because your gender dysphoria was indulged with other people's identities.

Oh yeah, and I very much doubt your thinking is "deeper" than "where [I] went".

I've seen no evidence whatsoever that you think anything like as deeply as the women replying to you. Every rabbithole I have seen you go down in your quest to delegitimise the validity of a female lived existence which is separate to yours is predictable and, I'm sorry to be blunt, tedious.

And yet, many people share the exact same view as the people you attempt to dismiss as being ‘gender critical’.

What is difference between those who also believe the same thing and those you dismiss as ‘gender critical’?

I know that the medical treatment for transsexualism cured me of dysphoria and allowed me to experience a more normal life than I was led to believe was possible. For that I am thankful.

most of my friends with children have introduced it into conversation not knowing my views because thus are concerned.

I've previously written about friends and colleagues who have mentioned a trans person or the trans topic. It is not with the same single-mindedness as gender critical people or trans people, for that matter.

You don't need to know the "cause" to understand that the fundamental belief of Gebderism is that some minds are wrong for some bodies.

Everything else comes after.