to object to MNHQ forcing a MALE/FEMALE gender binary on my account.

[HairyLittleCarrot]

I don't have any GENDER.

My MN account forces me to pick from two 'genders'.

I can't even opt out, it's a forced binary choice.

I'm not agender, pangender, cisgender, transgender, male gender, female gender or ANY GENDER.

If you want to know my sex, I am happy to provide that information. But you'll have to add that in as a field, because it doesn't exist currently.

Sex and gender are not the same thing. If you insist on collecting data by gender and making it a forced choice I would like an option as follows:

"Reject gender as a harmful, made up, bullshit concept".

Then when you analyse your account database you can say
X% identify as female gender
Y% identify as male gender
Z% reject gender as a bullshit concept.

AIBU to request MNHQ to alter my account details so that they do not misrepresent me?

Gruntled, there are many transactivists and trans allies who comment rather less than politely that lesbians are transphobic for not wanting to sleep with trans women with penises. You obviously aren't too familiar with the activities of prominent transactivists and their allies. I can recommend Google or Twitter, they're very useful websites.

See, while there is a clear attempt to reframe the discussion going on there (Ego), I think loads of the posts early on in the thread hinting at transgenderism and Tumblr and special snowflakes because they're too ignorant to educate themselves on the fact that the issue of gender affects FUCKING EVERYBODY and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the trans issue directly in a given discussion, have probably been what Ego picked up on. I personally tried to scroll past them and not get overcome with a sense of despair, so they didn't colour the way I viewed the thread quite as much, perhaps.

I am female. I have never strongly identified with 'being a woman' in the sense that I might in any way be different to men. I have of course been socialised differently (I was not brought up in some kind of experimental commune in the country), but have bought into it relatively little. I find the concept of gender an affront.

Bertie's post was excellent.

I think the sense that gender affects everybody, and shouldn't, is what motivated the thread in the first place!

There are estimates that only 33% of trans people have any surgery (including top surgery) so while maybe "vast" majority was too strong, it's certainly a lot more than "some".

Callie, I can't remember where I read that most FTT people keep their penises, but I'll try to find the source. Iirc it was around 70%.

They see themselves as "lesbians" and complain that it's transphobia for lesbian women to refuse to sleep with them, despite the penis

A simple google of the term "cotton ceiling" will provide evidence for this. Though I think (no evidence) that those would be the minority not the majority.

I will also add that I do not view myself as 'special' for not identifying so strongly with the concept of 'woman' that is regularly thrown at women. In reality if you just fucking look around you'll see that normal, boring people show a fairly large range of gender expression. I don't believe that your average 'girly girl' who wears more skirts and dresses than her friends believes herself to be more solidly 'woman' on a conscious level. I think she probably chooses to dress like that due to tastes and pressures, a largely subconscious internalisation of gender, etc., but certainly not particularly due to having considered the idea that gender may not be real and having consciously decided that, actually, she identifies strongly with 'feeling like a woman' more than her jeans-wearing friends. Just no.

Just another yanbu from me, too ill to formulate an argument :(

I don't get it.

I have no problem with trans people having surgery, or not. I do have a problem with the erosion of women as a class and a distinct biological category, the erasure of women's identity, and the complete disregard for women's rights to dignity and safety, promoted by a large number of transactivists and allies and enabled by the government, public services, and a largely ignorant population.

My profile says I'm male. I'm not. I couldn't care less.

I will also add that I do not view myself as 'special' for not identifying so strongly with the concept of 'woman' that is regularly thrown at women.

I'd be surprised if most women do, hence some of the controversy over terms like 'cis' especially at it applies to socialised ideas of what gender is - a vast number of women are gender non-conforming as we currently understand 'feminine' and 'masculine' to begin with.

SeekEveryEveryKnownHidingPlace I was busy trying to formulate my post so didn't see yours of 15:10, I think my phrasing/focus re. it being/not being a trans issue in this particular discussion was an unfortunate coincidence - it wasn't a rebuttal of what you said. I agree with your post.

Sorry, that should have read 'especially where it applies to socialised ideas' - I wasn't talking about the physical feelings of dysphoria that can be brought about by many different factors.

Exactly, RivieraKid, I nearly added something about the term 'agender' for the same reason, but Bertie (iirc) covered it in her post.

I have a couple of issues with this thread:

1. is the apparent assumption that this "Sex vs Gender" choice was made by MN with malice aforethought. Most people confuse the terms sex and gender purely by mistake, if their experience is one where most people's gender and sex match up. I agree it was lazy language, and can be upsetting for someone who feels their sex doesn't match their gender, but a simple polite email to MNHQ requesting the change would have been sufficient, rather than an angry post deriding gender as bullshit and trying to stir up a furious mob. Which leads me to:

2. until medical science comes out and declares gender doesn't exist, gender is not "bullshit". If gender is bullshit, why do MTF / FTM transpeople seek to switch from one gender to the other, and not to an "agender" state (ignoring the fact that OP doesn't agree with the definition of agender and seems to believe themselves beyond identifying)? "Gender" is, to those whose sex/gender do not align, certainly a fluid state with many components, but calling it "bullshit" implies it does not exist, when the state of having a gender clearly does - but that your gender can be one of many definitions, not just one of two definitions, as it used to be.

Gruntled, there are many transactivists and trans allies who comment rather less than politely that lesbians are transphobic for not wanting to sleep with trans women with penises. You obviously aren't too familiar with the activities of prominent transactivists and their allies. I can recommend Google or Twitter, they're very useful websites.

Venus, that doesn't equate to evidence that the vast majority of transwomen see themselves as lesbians.

I was one of those people who thought they were being helpful so I definitely appreciated that breakdown of why that is not a helpful term.

MN, and thus that gender question, was set up in 2001 when life was simpler.

Yes as entertaining as this thread has been, let's go back to 2001.

I mean, I do know trans people who are also gender critical, even if I don't know enough about gender critical theory, and they refer to themselves as transsexual, not transgender. Acknowledging that to them, gender is a performance and the desire to transition either way is based on sexual reassignment. I'm not sure when transgender and transsexual began to mean the same thing though. Maybe they still don't. Do they? Argh.

I didn't say that the vast majority of trans women saw themselves as lesbians.

I said the vast majority (and have since amended that to the "majority") of trans women hadn't had surgery, and that many of these (bepenised) trans women saw themselves as lesbians. That is true.

I think it's a real shame that people like Ego and cleaty regularly get shouted down and driven off these threads, and they degenerate into a load of people agreeing with each other about the horrors of people with penises. And, for the avoidance of doubt, I write as a woman who has no wish to identify as anything else. IME transwomen I have come across (and I know that is a tiny sample) have tended to be quite gentle souls and I have never encountered one that I viewed as threatening. People will no doubt be leaping to their keyboards to point out that some are in prison for offences of violence, but then that can also be said about a considerably greater number of women - and that violence does include penetrative sexual assaults.

But, to return to what the thread is about, it seems to me that it is entirely up to MN to choose what information they want to ask about, just as it is up to us not to join or, as I understand it, to refuse to give it to them. I can see how information about gender is more useful to them than information about sex, on the basis that a large proportion of female-directed advertising will be just as interesting to transwomen as non-transwomen. And I don't imagine advertisers care whose money they're taking.

I don't think the words do mean the same thing to everyone. Nor does a lot of this stuff. Hence the confusion on this thread.

Incidentally, what an appalling word "bepenised" is. I here and now categorically refused to describe myself as "bevaginaed" or "beovaried".

Gruntled

Cleaty quite clearly said Ego is the reason she was leaving the thread, nobody else is a problem