Trying to understand everyday views on sex and gender discussions

What sort of weird misogynist would call a woman describing why she needed female single sex toilets to keep the existing layout and was reminding others that female toilet usage varied and needed to be considered properly ‘skeevy’ and a ‘toilet fetishist’? Funny you should ask?

@Schallern what was your experience like in a group where acceptance was a base belief? Did you find no difference whatsoever between trans women and women, trans men and men? Were there no concerns about safety? As a bisexual woman you are part of a demographic that is more likely to be sexually assaulted than most, and normally by men. Was it possible to talk about that and what drove with the whole social circle it without being dismissed or the risk minimized? Did you naturally have some conversations with only some sub-groups?

I mean they identify with the sterotypes that they think define the other gender rather than the lived reality of being the other gender- gender being the societal expression of sex that is shaped by the values and culture at the time. An arabic man in the 1st century would dress as an arabic woman at the same time- no transwomen are wearing corsets and bustles in the 21st centrury.

What sort of weird misogynist would say that?

This link just came up in my FB feed. I've never come across this young man before.

I'm hoping that this kind of early transition is no longer allowed in North America?

https://www.iwfeatures.com/documentary/jonni-skinner-says-he-wasnt-born-in-the-wrong-body-but-his-doctors-told-him-otherwise/

If they identified WITH us, they wouldn't be riding roughshod over our boundaries.

But be kind though, eh? 🙄

Yes its very telling that the performative kindness only seems to extend to the male people and not the female people. Who could read your post and not have any empathy for women in the situations you've described?

It is interesting how the importance of single sex toilets to most women is derided as unimportant/ genital fetishism/ old fashioned etc, but at the same time is of such vital importance to trans women that if they are not allowed in this equates to erasure from public life.

I agree.

I have become more comfortable saying that I am trans (ideology) critical rather than gender-critical because that to me saying I am gender-critical is the same as saying I am race critical. Race and Gender will always exist because it is a societal expression of a genetic class and it will change depending who holds the most power in the society that the person resides.

I have also understood that the motivations for transitioning are different. Some people - usually traumatised gender-non conforming same sex attracted individuals want to erase their sex, and some people -usually traumatised opposite sex attracted men- want to gain sexual arousal/nervous system calming. Sadly because these groups are mixed up it is easier to hide as a predator.

Because of the mixing of groups and Self-ID that has removed the boundaries and safeguards of accessing "gender-affirming" meidcations and surgeries these groups have successfully become homogenised. This is causing terror in women, and putting vulnerable same-sex attracted kids permenant medicalised states. People with gender dysphoria are also now at risk, and because of the proposterous and misogyinistic drive of support of the gay rights organisations they have now given the bigots a reason to back after the gays/lesbians.

There is only one group of people who unilaterally benefit out of this mess. That is the predatory sexual perverts- everyone else is either neutral or loses.

I would say you can identify WITH the other gender but as the other gender.

I suppose in my mind the two sides are a) complete acceptance and b) complete denial and erasure of trans-people and outright transphobia.

The two sides are a) complete erasure of acknowledging women as a sex class separate to men in law and society so erasing women's sports, women's prizes, women's right to single sex prison provision etc and outright misogyny and homophobia and b) complete denial and erasure of trans people and outright transphobia.

I’m interested in what exists in the middle. What do normal, everyday, people believe? What is the most “common” view on trans issues? Outside of my own echo chamber, where does the line lie?

It's so nuanced in so many ways but also so very simple. We are mammals and as a species we reproduce with eggs and sperm. Two gametes, two sexes. There is no third gamete and no third sex. Some people have disorders of sexual development but this doesn't create a third sex and most trans people are very clearly male or female.

The definition of 'trans' actually comprises very different types of people with very different needs. There are teenage girls with gender dysphoria who have sexual abuse trauma and want to identify out of their sex especially when breasts grow and periods start. There are young boys and girls who are same sex attracted and as young children suffer from gender dysphoria and now they are encouraged to 'trans the gay away'. Look at the TED talk by the founder of mermaids and how her son liked girls toys and her homophobic husband couldn't cope with this.

Then there are men who have autogynephilia and have a sexual paraphilia where they get off on seeing themselves as women and they wear ridiculously pornography influenced clothing and enjoy transgressing women's boundaries. You can see the quotes from people like Grace Lavery and others which dehumanise womanhood and reduce it to vacant eyes and open holes.

Simply though also the whole 'trans' belief system defines womanhood as stereotypes enacted by people of different body types; rather than a body type that need not in any way limit the behaviour of the people who possess it. (I think Helen Joyce said that). You can have a masculine woman who loves maths and wearing trousers and this doesn't diminish in any way her femininity. A man can have long hair and enjoy flowers and this doesn't make him any less of a man. Gender stereotypes are limiting and put people in boxes. In the seventies people fought to break out of those stereotypes but gender identity theory defines everything by those stereotypes again and puts people back in boxes and hurts both men and women in the process.

In sports it is bodies who compete and not identities. People can believe what they like about themselves but they can't impose their belief system onto others - that doesn't mean I can't be kind and compassionate to my trans man friends. In almost all circumstances I would validate their identity but if they were to go to prison, I wouldn't want them locked up in a male prison.

I grew up at a time and in circles where it was fairly unremarkable for lads to wear eyeliner or nail varnish and girls to shave their heads and live in baggy jeans. Me and several of my friends were bi, and many of our idols embraced androgyny. We rejected gender stereotypes. We still do. We didn’t think that expressing yourself through your style made you a man or a woman, we thought that was regressive. We expressed our feminity and masculinity and everything in between without once imagining that that made us anything other than the sex we were born. This has shaped how I view issues around sex-based rights today. I reject gender norms and I support anyone’s right to express themselves whatever way they want, as long as it doesn’t harm or endanger others. Allowing individuals from a privileged group to identify their way into a more vulnerable group that has had to fight tooth and nail for the rights that they do have endangers that group’s safety and erodes the rights they fought for. And rewriting the criteria for classification into that group denies the realities that led to that group’s marginalisation and discrimination in the first place and seeks to make invisible the continued disadvantage that those realities present.

Ask yourself if you’re comfortable with the idea of people of a racial majority identifying themselves as a racial minority based on their feelings and preferences, and if not why?

And a fair chunk of the others think that trans women have been castrated.

I've always found "they just wanna pee" to be quite telling because women don't 'just pee' in public toilets, they deal with other bodily fluids that men don't have to. So while they "just wanna pee" women are also potentially dealing with periods, menopausal symptoms, breast milk leaks, attending to the toileting needs of small children, avoiding men that are making them feel unsafe etc etc.

It's not just about 'pee' even if we only think about toilets and ignore the other female spaces.

Just a reminder of how female toilet spaces are used and why single mixed sex cubicles should not be accepted as the only toilets available in areas outside of very small businesses.

Toilets are not just used behind a closed cubicle door. There are quite a few aspects of female toilet usage that happen in the public space, or even now still occur with a toilet door jammed open.

Don’t forget there is the safety aspect where people may rely on the gaps under doors and walls for their safety. Single use mixed sex toilets are not safe for those who then have medical issues while using the toilet, or are being attacked in the toilet. The gap underneath the door is there for a reason, and that reason includes being able to see a person who has fallen onto the floor or if a person is being attacked.

Here is my personal list of things that I have had to use the female single sex toilets for:

I have had to use the toilet while having a pram / pushchair jammed into the door with groceries.

I have had to have my mum use the public toilet because the disable toilet was not available and had her wheelchair jammed in the door because I couldn't leave her sit to move it and shut the door.

I have had breastmilk leaks / children's vomit / food spilled on my clothes and needed to have an unbuttoned top to dry the top under the hand drier.

I have come across other women quite regularly washing out their tops or their skirts etc and drying them enough to put back on .

I have friends who have miscarried in toilets and needed assistance and for that to be female people to make it more comfortable.

The cleaning up of clothes for breastmilk leaks and for other spills has happened to me in a work situation. In fact, it has also happened in a conference situation. One of my friends miscarried at work.

At work conferences it is not uncommon to find women drying their clothes under the hand drier because they have spilled something on their clothes. Just recently, I had to help a work colleague to wash out her clothes where someone spilled coffee down the entire front of her top in the female single sex toilets at work.

That you (a general you) have not experienced these issues doesn't mean they are not happening. I am glad that some people have never needed to do this things, it is uncomfortable and can be quite humiliating. But at least, in a female only toilet, it is a little better.

And no mixed sex toilets don't work for quite a few different reasons. Including waiting for things to be dried if a cubicle has a hand drier is going to cause congestion and therefore stress for a person having to clean and dry themselves off in a mixed sex environment.

Yet, what also happens when me, as a woman, brings up these issues on threads where some people (including some women) dismiss the needs of female people to have single sex toilets with a communal sink area, I get called 'skeevy' and a 'toilet fetishist' all to shame me from pointing out that as a girl and a woman I have have had to use toilets in ways that other people either ignore or dismiss as unimportant with their statements that they 'don't mind' sharing with male people.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/06/third-of-britons-dont-know-trans-women-born-male/

Following on from the 'bi-modal' clarification, anyone reading along might find this video interesting.

https://theparadoxinstitute.org/videos/is-sex-bimodal

The Paradox Institute have some interesting videos describing sex classification in humans and other stuff.

https://theparadoxinstitute.org/videos

The late Robbie Shepherd gave this explanation:

"Stubborn" and "Thrawn" arena the same.

It's "stubborn" when wee Johnny's mum tries to gie him some California Syrup [strong laxative] and he says "A winna tak yer California Syrup".

It's "thrawn" when wee Johnny says "A'll take yer California Syrup, but A winna shite!"

I agree.

Yes.

we have seen each of the reactions that you have mentioned here as excuses why male people should be treated as if they are female. And not one of those is relevant when you strip away the emotional reasoning and apply facts and logic.

It is important, isn’t it, for some people to be able to say ‘I am not like THOSE women, I am KIND’ when the reality is their position still is unkind to female people. But because of the moral standard that they have personally set as the standard for what is and isn’t kind they can feel that anything less than there line of acceptance is not kind while completely fucking ignoring the real outcomes of their personal position.

how many times have we seen this over the many years?

It is like the times we should attempt to get an answer to the question ‘how many female people do you consider acceptable to be harmed before you choose to not support male inclusion into any female single single sex provision (over the age of about 8 yrs old)?’ Remember to similar questions we had 100 female people year harmed in the UK before it was considered a high enough priority. We also had an answer of 35.

The ‘I’m alright, Jack!’ attitude comes across as completely tone fucking deaf when you look at it objectively and without prioritising male people’s emotional needs above female people’s needs.

OP, it is interesting that you phrased your question not in terms of what we all think, but what we think is an acceptable opinion. You also talk about your feelings first and foremost.

I would suggest considering the issue with logic and critical thinking, rather than with reference to what other people tell you to think, or what your feelings are. That's a more solid way to build an evidence based point of view.

Once you know what you think and why you think it, you can decide who to share that with - as you've noticed, not all opinions are equally socially acceptable in all circles.

I would start with:

• what is sex? Why has it evolved?
• why do we have separate services/ spaces for females, why was this considered necessary?
• what are the logical consequences of any position you decide to take

Eg if someone genuinely thinks TWAW, I would want them to consider what that means for, eg same sex medical/ social care and whether they really think, for example, elderly ladies should be forced to accept male carers and be gaslit that they are female - because that is one of the logical endpoints of that argument. 'Oh but that never happens' isn't an acceptable response - what is there to stop that happening if TWAW? (Answer- precisely nothing).

I think the vast majority of 'normies' think people who believe they are trans should be able to present as they wish, shouldn't be discriminated because of that and should have the same rights as everyone else.

But no one can change sex and therefore, treating someone as if they actually are the opposite sex, is an extraordinary course of action. Unfortunately one that has also been very detrimental to women's rights.

It seems to me that this is where a sensible, fact-based common sense based view of the world gets you to.

I can only assume that the people who parrot 'TWAW' have no critical thinking skills and/or are so indoctrinated by their tribe that they cannot engage with reality.

The pressing question is what, therefore, is 'gender' - apart from a performance or display of culturally coded stereotypes?

Younger people have been brought up to think we all have 'a gender' whereas for those a bit older we all know it is a relatively recently introduced term ( aside from 'gendered' forms in languages such as French). People have always experimented with self expression and tried to push against/rebelled against their parent's/society's cultural boundaries. Only now is it being referred to as 'gender'.

I am interested to know if this thread is helpful to you @Schallern ? I haven't read all the responses but in answer to your original q, I talk about this subject to friends, family and colleagues (medical) and have met with similar views to mine, where they have given the matter any thought. Some have expressed surprise that I am willing to admit to my views, although they share them, and hopefully I have empowered them to be more explicit and less fearful. These are: that women do not become men (and vv) by dressing in a stereotypical manner for the other sex; that taking hormones does not alter your underlying sex; that the evidence for 'transitioning' being a positive thing in someone's life is weak to non-existent and that the harms can be very significant (particularly to children and young adults) and are underplayed.

I treat trans-identifying people (both friends and patients) in exactly the same way that I treat anyone else - as individuals - and use the name they prefer. I do my utmost to avoid pronouns because I think this causes creates an atmosphere of untruth.

Sex absolutely does exist and in a measurable and easily definable way. It has always existed and it always will as long as we are in bodies on Planet Earth.

Sex is binary. There are males and there are females. The word we use for adult females in english is 'woman'. The word we use for adult males, in english, is 'man'. An infant or junior female is a 'girl'; an infant or junior male is a 'boy'

'Gender' is a word that has been used in the U.S.A as a polite euphemism for 'Sex' - and this is where the confusion started.

Queer Theorists such as Judith Butler came up with the concept of a 'gender identity'. This basically referred to the stereotypes or personality traits typically associated with each sex. If people wanted either to reject the strereotypes associated with their sex, or alternatively embrace those associated with the opposite sex they could 'identify' as that other 'gender'.

To most people what is being referred to as 'gender' is really just an individual's personality characteristics and preferences, and we are all a mixture of characteristics; plus there is a huge cross over of characteristics between the sexes.

Sex matters though......and whether or not we go on to have children or not our body is either one that has XX chromosomes or it has XY chromosomes ( there are some disorders of sexual development - but at root, even then 99% of people with DSDs are either male or female).

Our chromosomal blueprint has repercusions and consequences for us at the physical and social level. Females tend to be smaller and less muscular than males, plus there are a myriad of other structural physical differences between the sexes. Males also tend to have a different quality of sex drive - programmed in a different way to that of females.

These differences matter, especially for females in certain types of situation in which they are more vulnerable to predatory male behaviour; or when pregnant; or when nursing young children; or when engaged with certain types of physical activity; or when naked or undressing. This is why we have sex based protections and exemptions, and some sex based categories.

Males are not female, even if they are 'feminine'; and females are not male, even if 'masculine'. Feminine gay men are not women, and butch/masc women are not men.