"A Queer History of the United States for Young People" by Michael Bronski: people who don't fit into the molds society forces on them are queer

Males = testicles
Females = ovaries

HTH

Also kids who take puberty blockers are still recognisably their birth sex as they grow into adults. The underlying skeleton doesn't change shape. PBs do NOT work as advertised. And to be clear, they DO NOT go through the puberty of the opposite sex if they then go on opposite sex hormones. They just don't go through puberty at all.

By 'morphology' do you mean the outward appearance of the body?

Yes but hormones also effect a person's psychological traits
as well.

Of course, they would also retain some of their original sex traits, resulting in the mixture of male and female secondary sex traits which makes convincing 'passing' such a challenge.

Not if they haven't been through their own birth sex puberty.

So as far as I can see, changes in 'sex traits as in hormones & morphology' are just superficial changes to male and female bodies, which retain so much of their actual biological sex that there's no reason to say they are anything other than biological men and biological women, with some adjustments to their external morphology.

Technically speaking trans people are still able to change some sex traits which is the point hence 'biological sex' being a vague term unless the biological framework is specified.

Listen, if you want to kid yourself that females like Stock are the norm & have no social associations with male coded presentation,

So there we have it. Women really want to be men so they adopt a male look. So bloody tedious. And as another poster says, short hair and no makeup on women is hardly unusual, for whatever reason the women choose, but it's vanishingly unlikely it's because they think they're 'male-coded,' whatever the bloody hell that is.

... sorry to confront you all with reality but she is queer by socially constructed standards. She can reject that all she likes but it doesn't change the reality of social constructionism.

I accept there is a group of people who have a socially constructed standard by which she is, to them, "queer".

I do not accept that this is universally accepted, I don't even agree that it is the majority view.

By that definition any woman who behaves in a way which would be seen to be stereotypically male is "queer" and they most certainly are not.

The arrogance of thinking that someone can be labelled "queer" when that person does not themselves identify as queer would have been beyond belief, but it's become par for the course in the trans debate these days.

It's all about increasing the numbers to try to convince society that a small minority should have more power and influence than it does.

Surely if everyone is queer, no one is.

Listen, if you want to kid yourself that females like Stock are the norm & have no social associations with male coded presentation,

So there we have it. Women really want to be men so they adopt a male look. So bloody tedious. And as another poster says, short hair and no makeup on women is hardly unusual, for whatever reason the women choose, but it's vanishingly unlikely it's because they think they're 'male-coded,' whatever the bloody hell that is.

Thank you for replying.

I think this exchange is very helpful:
Of course, they would also retain some of their original sex traits, resulting in the mixture of male and female secondary sex traits which makes convincing 'passing' such a challenge.

You replied:
Not if they haven't been through their own birth sex puberty.

This is interesting because it explains why some people are so keen to have puberty blockers prescribed to children.
'Passing' as the opposite sex is very difficult, as there is usually evidence of birth sex traits that can't be changed.
The way around that is, according to you, to avoid going through 'their own birth sex puberty.'

I'm not suggesting you are advocating that, just reflecting on what you wrote.

Am I understanding this correctly: for a transperson to have the best possible chance of 'passing' successfully as their preferred sex, they'd have to avoid going through puberty?

Puberty is occurring earlier and earlier in children - the average age is 11 for girls and 12 for boys, but it can be earlier.

So the intervention which would allow a transperson to alter their secondary sex traits sufficiently to be able to 'pass' convincingly in adulthood, i.e. prescribing puberty blockers, would have to occur earlier and earlier in a child's life?

This throws up two issues for me:
consent - the Gillick tests are, as you know, complicated and stringent, and it's not clear that a child of 11 or 12 can fully comprehend and weigh up all the possible consequences of transitioning, and of using PBs toward that end.

persistence - a child should show a long-lasting, persistent gender dysphoria/distress/incongruence before PBs can be justified - but if puberty is starting at 11 or 12 or earlier, that doesn't give much time for 'persistence' to be established, does it? Defining a child as 'a trans child' has to occur earlier and earlier in childhood.

If PBs are not deployed, sex traits associated with a person's birth sex are always going to be present, and although they have 'transitioned', they will probably always be recognisable as a biological man or a biological woman.

This goes towards explaining the campaign to prescribe PBs to children for reasons other than the ones PBs were intended for.

By 'morphology' do you mean the outward appearance of the body?

Yes but hormones also effect a person's psychological traits
as well.

Of course, they would also retain some of their original sex traits, resulting in the mixture of male and female secondary sex traits which makes convincing 'passing' such a challenge.

Not if they haven't been through their own birth sex puberty.

So as far as I can see, changes in 'sex traits as in hormones & morphology' are just superficial changes to male and female bodies, which retain so much of their actual biological sex that there's no reason to say they are anything other than biological men and biological women, with some adjustments to their external morphology.

Technically speaking trans people are still able to change some sex traits which is the point hence 'biological sex' being a vague term unless the biological framework is specified.

Listen, if you want to kid yourself that females like Stock are the norm & have no social associations with male coded presentation, knock yourself out but that has very little to do with reality.

It does seem that I'm contemplating a whole new existence....

Better to make it clear that this a metaphorical usage then. You applied a law of physics to a mental ability to recognise patterns as if pattern recognition is a billiard ball. I think that is a poor metaphor.

I'd just like to mention that humans see patterns all over the place. Random dots on a map appearing to line up, faces in clouds or flowers (pansies for instance). Some of those patterns are misleading. We also think something is "normal" not just because it is common, but because we are repeatedly told that it is normal. Apparently, normal people like noisy parties, but there are an awful lot of abnormal people who prefer to go for a quiet walk. Can we get away from the obsession with categorising everyone and looking down on those who don't conform? We have laws to regulate the most damaging behaviour, and social pressures which have both good and bad aspects.

The problem with lauding "queer" is that people who are slightly unusual and think they don't fit in latch on to this wonderful tribe of odd people, and then try to be like them. Hence all the piercings and hair colouring etc in an attempt to belong in this new tribe. The category starts off as putting up two fingers to convention, and then rapidly morphs into its own set of conventions.

You seem confused. Individuals are free to identify with whatever they wish so there's no imposition upon them to categorise themselves in that way. The context is social categorisations that exist & their implications on self identification. There are many reasons why this has been adopted that are unrelated to the historical slur & in fact function to challenge it.

Key Reasons People Use "Queer"

All-Encompassing Umbrella Term: It serves as a broad label for anyone who is not heterosexual or not cisgender. This is helpful for people whose specific identity doesn’t fit neatly into traditional acronyms like LGBT.

Challenging Binaries: Using the term is often a deliberate choice to resist rigid, heteronormative categories like "straight versus not-straight" or strict male/female gender roles.

Political and Activist Identity: Originating heavily through late-20th-century groups like Queer nation the word carries an active, critical stance that views non-conformity as a form of social resistance rather than just a personal trait.

Reclaiming Language: The word historically functioned as a hostile slur or insult. Reclaiming it strips power away from oppressors and turns a tool of shame into a badge of pride.

Flexibility and Simplicity: It avoids the need for a hyper-specific label, allowing a person's identity or attraction to evolve dynamically over time without feeling boxed in. It is also quick and easy to say compared to longer acronyms.

Newton's laws of motion do not literally apply as physical laws in sociology, though social scientists use them as metaphors or analogies to model social systems.

Oh dear.
You realise that from this moment on, now you're a butch lesbian, you'll be chased out of the Ladies' by pitch-fork-wielding gender-critical hate-fuelled bigots? A grim future stretches ahead of you.
Thoughts and prayers
😏.

I'm looking at myself in a whole new light here. All those years preferring short hair and no makeup because I can't be bothered and all the time I'm a butch lesbian.

It’s the simplistic Genderist thinking. A woman with short hair & no makeup is a butch lesbian. A man with long hair & lipstick is a femme lesbian.

Newton's laws of motion do not literally apply as physical laws in sociology, though social scientists use them as metaphors or analogies to model social systems.

Kathleen Stock is "butch"? Blimey, I've misunderstood butch for about 40 years!

Listen, if you want to kid yourself that females like Stock are the norm & have no social associations with male coded presentation,

So there we have it. Women really want to be men so they adopt a male look. So bloody tedious. And as another poster says, short hair and no makeup on women is hardly unusual, for whatever reason the women choose, but it's vanishingly unlikely it's because they think they're 'male-coded,' whatever the bloody hell that is.

So sex stereotypes only exist now because of trans people otherwise they wouldn’t? Like in Afghanistan where trans people 'don't exist'? 🤥

In case you hadn't noticed the monumentally disgusting misogynistic discourse regarding the Cornell 7 rape, it has exactly zero relationship to trans people so it might be time to give the trans derangement syndrome a rest.

And no, rigid does not mean impossible to change.

There is no such thing as a "law of pattern recognition". And it is not a given that the majority will follow any social pattern.

The context is how social stereotypes.are created not general behaviour. Please do inform us all of the cognitive brain mechanism that creates stereotypes then. Science is all ears….

To be fair, perhaps people who don't leave their house much just don't know what ordinary women look like?

The answer in my view is you can't. But that's not to say its trans people who are at fault for perpetuating gender stereotypes but simply a consequence of human biology. Trans people like queer people are simply identifying in the social category that already exists…with or without them.