Such an interesting article about the psychological burden of performing “gender”

When it is just a tiny handful of TIMs trying to access spaces set aside for women and girls, and the rest of the TIMs are respectful of women and of safeguarding, then we'll consider the extreme instances argument.

Mmmm. Data?

Why not stick to the term trans sexual if that's the case?

Because its trans gender.

@Northernlightsss I really didn't want to have to go here but you seem determined to deny reality by gaslighting us and you've derailed what was actually quite an interesting conversation by doing so. I invite you to check out reduxx, but it comes with warning that these are awful stories that you can't unsee, and they are awful because they are true.
https://reduxx.info/

He won't look. Guaranteed.

OK, let's pretend for a minute that you can have the gender bit. And it's not about biological sex.

So why are people trying to force their way into spaces which are split by biological sex, and not by gender?

'Stories' don't qualify as data. Try again.

You don't seem to comprehend that natal sex isn't the trump card you think it is. A conflict in rights requires a balancing of rights or proportionality test that depends on the particular circumstances involved. In other words, whether there is an actual disadvantage.

There are laws (such as the Equality Act and regulations governing workplaces, schools and prisons) that ever so rarely require different treatment according to sex. As you very well know, what TRAs want is for 'sex' in those laws to mean either birth sex or, if applicable, acquired gender, whether certificated or not. The Supreme Court have found that only birth sex is intended, because only birth sex is relevant to why differential treatment is necessary in the first place. TRAs hope to gloss over this by focussing relentlessly on acquired gender.

Trans people can socialise in their acquired gender to their hearts' content, but for legal purposes they must be treated in accordance with their birth sex. Happily, everyone knows what their birth sex is, irrespective of any strange ideas they may have about biology.

You can, of course, still campaign to change the law so as to abolish birth sex as a legal concept and as a protected characteristic. Good luck with that.

And there is a disadvantage to women every time a man walks into the women's toilets, single sex hospital ward etc. Particularly to those who cannot be around men in those circumstances, be that for trauma or religious reasons, or anything else.

Totally agree, and personally I can totally get on board with a camp gay guy or a bloke who dresses, you know, David Bowie style or out there, no problem. Love it. But a man who is obviously dressing in a female coded way that signals to me I need to pretend something he'sfemale, like "not notice" and just act like I'm interacting with a woman just doesn't work on some level. I feel compelled rather than engaged. And I don't like feeling compelled.

This seems to be the new argument, I've seen it across a few boards from TRAs, the proportionality speil. Good to know what the next front is, thanks.

I beg to differ, but don't you try again please, you are boring and far too waffly to even follow

The confusion arises for those who don't understand or can't accept that sex isn't the only way the sexes are socially distinguished.

Your confusion arises because you don't understand or can't accept that social distinctions, whether individual or collective, are rooted in the imagination, and can be opted out of.

Sex is rooted in physical reality and cannot be opted out of.

Nobody needs to be gender conformist, you can walk away from that any time.

Choosing to conform to perceived gender expectations or expressions of a sex does not earn access to the spaces designated for members of that sex,

Because sex is real, it remains the criterion for access.

Because gender is imaginary, it cannot trump the reality of sex.

Apologies did not see this response.

If you think about what the widely accepted increased suicide risk factors are for the general population you might notice that trans people are more likely to be at risk to suicidality because many of those risk factors (familial/societal rejection, addiction, mental illness, discrimination, unemployment & homelessness) apply to them…& not just one but in multiples which ups the risk significantly.

So its important to take trans people risk of suicidality seriously because of the proven risk factors. For this reason I suspect that patients suggesting they maybe be suicidal or thoughts of suicidality are treated with extreme care.

No that is a ton of waffle.

You clearly said this is about changing gender, not sex.

Services are split by biological sex, not gender.

You always run into word salad as soon as we come to the nitty gritty of being clear about what do you mean by gender if you don’t mean it as a coy euphemism for sex.

What is gender?

It seems to have 3 meanings:

1. A euphemism for biological sex
2. Presentation, clothes, interests, mannerisms, associated more with one sex or the other, but not exclusively so
3. Some sort of inner sense of whether you are male or female which is completely separate from your body.

I don’t know what you mean by gender. But you have said it’s not 1.

But it is not relevant to services, spaces and arrangements set up for male or female people. These are divided by SEX.

the widely accepted increased suicide risk factors are for the general population . . . . . (familial/societal rejection, addiction, mental illness, discrimination, unemployment & homelessness)

Those risk factors apply to everyone, across the population. Nothing special about being trans.

being poor, living in an isolated area, having a chaotic childhood, all increase risk.

I'm sorry but I really find this attitude the telling one.

Victim blaming?!

No absolutely not.

Some people ARE freaks and weirdos! The thing is YOUR comment says a huge amount about the problem.

What's wrong with being a freak?! Genuinely?!

I've always been a bit odd and Ive tried to fit in to a degree but ultimately it doesn't work and I have just gone 'fuck it' over the years because trying to do that made feel worse or more uncomfortable and less confident.

We should be encouraging people to just be without this fucking identity labels. You are what you are. You can't bloody change it. If you are a bloke you can't be a woman. Stop trying and just be a bloke in a sodding dress if you want.

I have so much more time and respect for this. It doesn't demand anything from me as much as anything else.

But few people actually say this. No one really says 'actually it's ok to be a bit odd'. Weirdly people who take ownership of being a big odd, project confidence and that is picked up on by others who tend to respond to the confidence positively despite oddness.

There the whole idea that the most attractive thing in other people isn't whether they are drop dead gorgeous, it's actually confidence. You can't fake it - attempts to fake it result in misreads / thinking something is off / dislike of overconfidence.

We have an era of ultra conformity in youth culture across the board. It's driven by the perfectionism and tribalism of social media - where you have to be insta perfect and there's a lack of awareness of how fake this is. It's driven by the purity spirals of virtue signalling. You have to ultra conform to your tribe otherwise you have somehow committed some awful faux pa.

Of course women in the 40s and beyond tend to have passed this stage and realise how utterly pointless and ridiculous it is.

We need to be teaching kids that it's ok not to fit in. It's ok not to seek everyone else's approval. And in doing so you will find your way by doing exactly this. Stop playing the game and you stop being hostage to impossible rules.

What this 'analysis' fails to reckon with is its built in to the human condition to be attractive to others. Right or wrong its an evolutionary adaptation survival mechanism so pretending you can fight against hard wiring with empty platitudes is a lost cause. If it were that easy consumerism would drop off a cliff..& so would our economy.

The risk of suicide increases the more you fall into what I call 'the reality gap'.

The reality gap is the gap between idealism of expectation and actual lived experience.

If you have massive expectations and then somehow crash and burn for what ever reason, you fall heavier into the reality gap.

So people who are high flyers and over stretch and their world crashes from an amazing lifestyle to losing it all
People who want to be X but have zero chance of it
People who feel failures because they aren't popular.
People who have a relationship break down.

People with lower less perfectionist tendancy who are less bothered about achieving X are less at risk of the reality gap.

The reality gap can be imposed on you by the social expectations of others too: The parents who want their child to be a superstar.
In this case it's the deliberate build up of unobtainable and unrealistic expectations.

The reality gap features in most cases of suicide.

Coming to terms with reality or having a pragmatic attitude to life generally means you are less likely to be at risk of suicide.

We have a mental health crisis in young people currently - I do think a lot of it is associated with this phenomenon of a growing reality gap.

This whole thing of if you don't achieve x means your life is worthless is actually fairly modern. Worth was measured in multiple different ways in the past. We have almost had a narrowing of what is acceptable and increasing conformity driven ideals.

I think what we will find is there will have to be a switch back to finding fulfilment and self worth in other areas.

Consumerism largely IS a huge part of the problem though!

While it may be comforting to infantilise humans into being 'conned' the facts are marketing relies on tapping into a psychological connection. In other words, there is no consumerism without desire to begin with. If there weren't we wouldn’t have such individual tastes in our consumer choices.

Do you have any research to back this up? Never heard of this as an accepted risk factor.

In the particular circumstances of women’s spaces - toilets, changing rooms, prisons, sports teams etc, the balancing of rights, in the UK, has come down on the side of biological women because they do have an actual disadvantage.
YOU don’t seem to comprehend that making all kinds of convoluted arguments about gender and wishing natal sex wasn’t the trump card will make it so.