To think a 10 year old girl shouldn't be encouraged to see herself as "nonbinary"

[MrsJamin]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37383914

How is this story so lauded by the right-on BBC? It's so very irresponsible of the parents to persuade a girl that she doesn't need to be a girl. Girls should be told that they are girls, and that doesn't prevent them from liking or doing anything that people say boys should only do. How does she even know what hormone blockers are? She could mess up her health forever by taking hormones in her adolescence. :(

(and yes, another trans thread - I don't care, this is SCARY SHIT right here when girls don't want to be girls)

To whom, exactly are you addressing your lecture, Cynthesizer?

To those that need it.

Far out, man

I am absolutely amazed that a biologist can spout such rubbish about gender. There is nothing scientific about gender. There is sex and there are gender roles (a social construct) and that's it - where is this separate "gender identity" to be found? What evidence have you for this? Anyone can provide definitions of made up terms, doesn't make them actually have meaning.

In that very long post, Cynthesizer, you repeatedly confuse sex with gender. In your description of the cancer patient, for example, she is distressed because of gender. Her sex remains unchanged. Ditto in your example of a man who loses his genitals. His sex isn't affected. He's still male.

Gender isn't "what you are". You may have missed numerous MN debates in which none of the posters had a "gender identity". I certainly don't. I'm a woman because of my body and my life experience (which is based on that body). It seems very important to trans advocates that we all have a gender identity, but we don't.

I could go on. You make a number of false comparisons or examples. And I do hope you didn't intend your post to be as patronizing as it sounded. I haven't read something so reeking of condescension for years.

Nor me, Prawn.

Gender is what you "are." It's a piece of your identity. And your identity is not entirely defined by your bodY

The more I read crap like this the more I think 'gender' is just a fancy word for personality.

I have asked this several times in my life and have never been given a straight answer.

I am biological female. I have absolutely no gender identity. What am I?

Jesus christ cyn, i don't think ive ever read anything so patronising.

Cynthesizer - gender is an incredibly unhelpful and obfuscating word. It means different things to different people and trans ideology exploits this.

Gender, in feminism, is the mechanism via which male supremacy is maintained as a social order whilst claiming to be the natural order. Gender is male supremacy and the socialization of its citizens. It isn't something you choose, it isn't an identity and there is nothing individual about it. Gender is the socialization of humans to accept that the natural order is girls and women as subordinate and low status and boys and men as dominant and high status.

I agree with Sheila Jeffreys when she suggests that we stop using it and go back to the old vocabulary of "sex role" or "sex caste" for that is what gender is. Just as we should stop using the sanitized and woolly "transgender" - the word is transsexual. Precise language with precise and consistent meaning, easily understood by all, is vital in this brave new world we find ourselves in.

Err..about 'non-binary'

aeon.co/essays/the-idea-that-gender-is-a-spectrum-is-a-new-gender-prison

Worth a read. Came across it earlier and ties everything up just nicely I reckon.

I need to really read more than the last couple of lines before responding...

And gender is so not "what you are".

Gender is the sex status society awards you.

So for example my sex (biology) is female. My gender (place in social order) is subordinated / assigned inferior.

For a man, his sex is male (biology) and his gender (place in social order) is dominant / assigned superior.

To talk about gender as an internal identity / essence is nonsensical.

The more I read crap like this the more I think 'gender' is just a fancy word for personality.

Funnily enough, that is exactly what the article I linked concludes as, and explains each step to getting there too.

that is exactly what the article I linked concludes as

--

I didn't mean this the way it came across. The article pulls apart 'gender is a spectrum' stuff and concluded that noone really has a 'gender' its all just a personality. We do however, have a sex. Which is entirely different, which we all knew already. Except possibly the biologist who seems to mix them up a lot.

Except possibly the biologist who seems to mix them up a lot

Might have a handle on biology, but not sociology or feminism - which are equally valid disciplines.

People often think sex and gender are the same thing. They aren't, they're two different words with completely different biological definitions - and it's very easy to look them up if you get confused

Seems to me, Cynthesizer that you're the one who's confused.

Gender is an ideological social system. It's based on an ideologically-constructed way of viewing biological difference ie that the difference between male and female-sexed humans is significant, meaningful, and important beyond sexual reproduction. Also that sexual difference should structure our society.

But after that, gender is very little to do with biology ...

I agree with PPs. Gender is a social construct that allocates roles and status in society on the basis of biology. There is very rarely a biological basis for that allocation e.g. there is nothing about my female biology that makes me intrinsically better at housework.

Oh good lord

agree with the other posters cyth post was very patronising

Silly??? Ok then

I am always very polite on here

There would be a lot of swearing if i had received that lecture in real life

I actually thought Cyn s post was pretty clever. After all it's a subtle but useful way to shut down argument by deliberately obfuscating the language used which confuses things beautifully.

Of all the trans threads I've come across, such as Karen Parker's Brazilian wax and stuff about Alex Drummond et al, first "woman" cannon fodder, this is certainly the mosr chilling. It's shocking child abuse dressed up as right-on/hip parenting.

I despair because we've had this safe schools hysteria here in Australia (lgbt friendly schools program) and I successfully lobbied against homophobic male teachers for my school to become one, but now I tear my hair out to think of the trans ideology being fed via it. Particularly girls who have been abused seeing it as an option, as mentioned earlier. So appalling and anti women.

Oh and I think nonbinary is a crock of utter bullshit. I don't do any feminine things. Am I a man? Fuck no. I'm a woman but it doesn't define me.

The pirate party is just....words fail me...this mother is clearly desperate to have a snowflake child. I'm speechless at the whole thing.

Why do people need to declare their Gender or Sexual persuasion anyway? I have never been asked in 48 years or needed to tell anyone. I have a friend who is somewhere in the process of MtF - he has better nails than me and better handbags. but I've never felt the need to know what he/she "calls him/herself"

Didn't work though, itsallgoing, did it? With one bound the MN posters were free, leaping effortlessly over the gender bollocks.

The whole half hour of Saturday IPM at 5:30 was devoted to this. Early on, the mother gave, as an example of how Leo wasn't like a girl at quite a young age, that 'he' wanted to be Peter Pan (the implication being that 'he' should have wanted to be Wendy instead!!! I was utterly horrified.

One good thing about going to an all girl's school was that you got to play all the parts, whether on stage or just reading a play in English.

As far as I am aware I don't think this led anyone to question their biology.