What TRAs or 'gender' advocates and 'gender critical' feminists agree on.

Another factor is cultural conceptions of womanhood and femininity - and who has the power and influence to shape these.

The vast majority of women throughout history spent their lives slogging away in intense physical (and endless reproductive) labour. But our standard image of woman is hardly pregnant and sturdy, wearing practical clod-hoppers and with leathery hands. It's the whole sexualised Madonna / whore shebang - woman defined only in relation to man, and on his terms.

And I guess it was men with money and time who constructed her - writers and artists and thinkers, building on a privileged, romanticised male gaze. Which means the idealised femininity of the maiden/lady is confined to literature, art and the more rarefied environments with privilege to accommodate - and therefore demand - those ideals. But as such, she becomes aspirational.

I think we see this even now, as this newest iteration of ideal womanhood is similarly shaped by middle-class privilege - academia, influential middle-aged white male transitioners, drag culture etc. - and imposed on the rest of us as a moral standard to which to aspire: in this case, Be kind! (Plus ça angel-in-the-house change...)

ETA: Yes - kind of a cross-post, ish, with Bridget and Tea.

And birth, breastfeeding, and keeping children from being eaten by wild animals would have meant the woman's time would be taken up completely with foraging and other responsibilities, and keeping the children alive.

Mammals (whether or not they are human) rely on females prioritising the needs of their young until they are independent. The idea that they might prioritise their own needs is therefore intrinsically threatening.

I did start my thinking well back to the very beginnings of human communities, and my thinking was that the first thing males would have noticed would have been that women were weaker, and that only women gave birth. That would be a valuable commodity for males, and would have wanted to protect (control) that commodity. Hence, the possession. The protection would have created dependence. And birth, breastfeeding, and keeping children from being eaten by wild animals would have meant the woman's time would be taken up completely with foraging and other responsibilities, and keeping the children alive.

The "women are temptresses" was thoroughly embedded through various religions much later. But I think that just illustrates my point: women were only allowed to be seen by society in certain ways, and these "ways" came to mean "feminine." These stereotypes certainly weren't going to be seen as "masculine" because men weren't allowed to be "weak", weren't "burdened" by children, and always had more power, mobility, and agency than women (even if they had very little to none, men always had more than women).

It doesn't matter what percentage it is. There is no percentage that means that a woman who doesn't want to get changed in the presence of males should lose the right to having a single sex space and lose the bodily autonomy to choose who sees her naked.

The variety in different polls comes from (a) ambiguous wording, where polls that aren't clear that they are talking about biologically intact male people in spaces that are supposed to be female only getting very different responses than ones that are clear and (b) changes over time as more people think about it properly and realise that it's not such a great idea.

The #nodebate strategy was the TRA's best hope, it prevented people from engaging their brains. Now that the actual law has been clarified people are using their brains a bit more. Changing the law would require someone to come up with an unambiguous wording that either definitively draws a distinction between "true trans" vs "any male who wants to enter" (I have yet to see any attempt to do this) or abolishes single-sex spaces altogether (which would need a hell of a lot of justification given how much evidence there is that they are needed and are a reasonable and proportionate provision.)

It's a free country with free speech and it is entirely legitimate for there to be discussions and debates about how to change the law, but the new law will need to be based on specific, measurable and objective facts and the process of trying to work out what it should be is intrinsically causing more and more people to conclude that actually single sex spaces delineated solely on biological sex aren't that bad. You cannot have a female male any more than you can have a square circle.

There are plenty of misogynistic people in the world, and internalised misogyny is part of why it perpetuates.

Both clear and up to date.

At least it’s a change from “you don’t care about women in prison, I’m the only person who has ever been in prison or who understands prison or cares about these women” (I know at least one GC FWR poster who is an ex prisoner).

If TRAs were sick of how toxic the "debate" has become
They shouldn't have started from the point of #nodebate.
They would disband bashback
They would stop making groups cancel pro women groups and speakers
They would stop disrupting meeting that GC women manage to get
They would stop threatening violence/rape
They would stop the piss protests
They would stop vandaling public properties
They wouldn't wear masks to intimidate those with a different view
They would allow lesbians their women only meet ups and let all lesbians (whatever their view) take part in pride.

You can stand by it as much as you like, it’s still complete nonsense 😂

Is 'gender' based on how the majority act, or an arbitrary definition?

Good question!

I've always thought that what came first was patriarchy and oppression, based on women's weaker physical structure and the fact that pregnancy and childbirth, and everything in between, would restrict our "freedoms" and the time that we had to improve on our personal situations, in order to remove barriers.

With patriarchy and oppression embedded, societies were arranged around the Man, and women therefore "became feminine" (meaning oppressed, restricted, and powerless, both physically and societally).

So that became "feminine gender." And all the accoutrements of "feminine gender" were perpetuated and seen as "normal" for women, within society. These became the stereotypes.

Of course, different societies had, and have, different expectations of "feminine gender" ( and, by extension, women). If there have been societies wherein women were expected to be strong, money-making, bringing home the bacon, do all the fighting, etc., then "feminine" in that society would have meant those things.

In most Western, patriarchal societies, however, "feminine " came to mean submissive, obedient, weak, dependent, etc., because that's what women were expected, and allowed, to be.

Does that make sense? Or am I reaching?

I never thought I'd be grateful for my upbringing, but I have to say my mother did a bang on job of making sure her kids did not adhere to the be kind framework for women, especially when it came to how to deal with men.

I'll be polite to anyone I meet in public, until they give me reason not to be. If I like them I may even on occasions do things that could be classed as being kind, but I'll be fucked if be kind is my starting position.

Yeah? nah... fuck that.

There have been a slew of posts over the past days shaming women if they are not sufficiently kind and thoughtful towards a group of male people.

The logic never seems to stand up to scrutiny though.

Plus ca change eh BB

Don't forget Helle we're supposed to be kind women not sweary women. We are womaning wrong. Again.

if you deny being cis then I'd assume you mean you aren't the gender you were stated to be at birth.

I deny being 'cis'. I also deny being a Kafir. That doesn't make me Muslim. It means I don't acknowlege as valid the framework that means you are either Muslim or reject God.

I spent my career doing things like construction that were 'not of my gender'.

To have some bullshit esposing dipshit telling me I'm CIS because I IDENTIFY as a woman with all the frills and pretty bows and do all the girlie things I was supposed to do is so far from reality that they are going to need a leetle bit more than that to convince me that rapists should be in the toilets with teenage girls.

I deny being 'cis' because it is an ideological term that includes male people with DSDs.

The insistence that people are 'cis' if they are not transgender is actually misleading. Because for the term to be meaningful, people would have to actively 'identify' as the same genderr as their birth sex. I don't identify as any gender but I am also not 'agender'. That categorisation is purely ideological in basis and it also assumes every person who does not identify as being transgender as being part of that belief system.

And it is a belief system because there is no biological foundations to the belief. It is purely subjective.

How can anyone believe men are women without knowing how they became women in the first place?

It is telling though that you and all these mystery women that believe this nonsense can never explain it, only deflect. So thank you.

And here we are:

https://www.gendergp.com/blog/imane-khelif-and-the-issue-with-gender-eligibility-testing-in-sports/

If GenderGP are not experts in assessing who is and is not 'cis gender' then maybe people should take it up with them.

There was also a person who claimed to have a doctorate in the field who posted on MN that Khelif was most definitely a cis woman.

I can continue to find examples, but the reality is, there is confusion out there, and I would suspect that any research data collection mechanic that used the term 'cis' would be either causing confusion or influencing the outcome of the data being collected, or both. It would most certainly weaken the data gained from the collection tool. Just like the census caused a great deal of confusion.

Why do I bother?
Why do I bother?
Why do I bother?
Why do I bother?
Why do I bother?
Why do I bother?

Life would be so much nicer on a beach somewhere all deserted right now..,

You don't have to ID as cis but if you deny being cis then I'd assume you mean you aren't the gender you were stated to be at birth.

I would guess that the vast majority of posters on this board do not identify with the 'gender they were stated to be at birth' and feel that it is very much NOT apt for them. That is where the whole concept of being 'gender critical' comes from.

On the other hand their sex cannot be changed, regardless of identity.