What is the difference? (Warning - another transgender thread)

[Flippetydip]

I am prepared to get totally flamed for this but it is a genuine, and not meant to be goady question. I know there is a huge amount of transgender posts on here at the moment (hence the title so people have the choice not to read) but my question is:

If I can self ID as a man (or woman if I'm a man) can I self ID as a person of another race? I seem to recall a huge hoo-ha back along over some woman in the States who identified as black but was originally white and was absolutely pilloried. Genuinely, what is the difference?

I find it funny that it’s a fact that male/female animals act differently to each other, way differently... but people can’t accept that humans do too. It’s all of a sudden a social thing.
We aren’t talking about makeup, or pretty dresses... we are talking about core differences in our behaviour and actions. You can’t deny them. We’re just different and better/worse at different things thanks to biological differences that give us edges to different things.

Putting on a fucking dress and makeup and calling yourself Chelsea doesn’t make you a woman. Sorry. But you do your thing, because I’m fine with that, but stop claiming to be a woman. Most women I know don’t wear dresses very often and don’t slap on 5 inches of makeup every day, nor do their tits look like something straight from a porn movie... it’s just male expectations of women, dressed up to look like something different.

Jaceedove I am not really sure about feeling like a woman internally (nothing against those who do, just not something that tallies with my own experience, iyswim). However, I completely support your right to live your life in a way that makes you happy, as I would anyones, as long as it doesn't impinge on the rights of others to do the same.

I DO see a big difference between people like yourself, who have spent years living as a woman, and those who think that simply stating "I am a woman" makes them one. I think there are lots of people (myself included) who only really began to have a problem with trans issues recently, and who have always been comfortable with people like yourself calling themselves women. I never really thought too deeply about the logic, tbh, until confronted with the reductio ad absurdam of self id that is being pushed by many TRAs.

I wish we lived in a society where no-one batted an eyelid at men who expressed themselves in a stereotypically female way, but I am pragmatic enough to know that we don't and hence understand that many men who wish to do this identify as female. None of us are brought up in a cultural vacuum. The trend towards children being labelled as "trans" bothers me, because it seems to be based on very regressive notions of how boys and girls should act. As a former "tomboy" I suppose I see myself in some of those kids, and it makes me sad.

I genuinely bear no ill will towards people like yourself. I hate the idea of people being upset by the debate, but I still think it is a debate that needs to be had.

Frantically, I think you are confusing transvestites - of which I agree there are plenty out there - with those that used to be called transsexual - but are all subsumed under the title transgender that was invented in America (of course!)

Most trans women I know, as in those who transitioned 40-50 years ago when only about 100 people in the whole UK had done so ever up to that point and under 100 a year were doing so even then are not of the type you describe.

That is why most of us lived happily amongst you accepted for all those years when there was no media fuss. We did not stand out in the way you suggest and we took jobs across the spectrum.

I was working in an office job in the 70s as a woman and being treated as a woman in terms of equality and pay at the same time as I actually was still legally a man and could have demanded to be treated and paid as such.

I chose not to do that because I was happy to be accepted as a woman with the good and the bad and fight for equality not superiority.

Cross posted and didn't see your last post Jaycee before writing mine.

Referring back to Fugitive's post of 17:13 nobody is disputing the reality of biological sex. Gender and sex are not the same thing. Transwomen have male biology. That is their sex. They can still be women. That is their gender.

I genuinely think we should have had a proper national referendum before the defintion of the word woman was changed to reflect Fugitive's explanation.

I did not bloody well agree to it and it was not on any manifesto that I voted for.

I absolutely feel for and symapthise with anyone who hates their body and has any kind of body or identity dysphoria, but I don't think we are handling it in a the right way.

Not to mention that body/ identity dypshoria can be a symptom of dissociative disorders which may be born or serious trauma or abuse and needs appropriate and sensitive psychological therapy.

We had words for sex: male/female, man/woman. And words for gender: masculine/feminine.

Now we don't have words for sex. Because of something. I have no idea what. But SEX is actually important.

Express yourself how you want but I still want to talk about period poverty and childbirth and FGM and all the other things that affect women because of biology and our oppression based on it.

I never had the slightest issue sharing space with Jaycee and everyone like her. But that is not the world now and if lines have to be drawn, I'm afraid women and/or transsexual people like Jaycee will be the ones to suffer. Because lines will have to be gender or sex. They can't be both.

It is not really about acting as a boy or a girl. I have no problem with there being boyish girls and girly boys. They existed in the 50s when I was growing up too but they were not trans.

One of my few friends then was a girl who was enough of a tomboy to be okay playing with me and the first person I ever told about myself. But she grew up to be a happy girl with confidence in her female self and willingness to express herself that way without losing the other side of her nature.

My experience of trans was never focused around toys or playmates as I was not restricted in these by my parents who were very understanding for that era. It was just like an inner sense of wrongness - almost like when you feel a headache coming on that grows into a migraine - you try to ignore it, you take tablets. but it keeps getting worse.

You hear all this guff about being trapped in the wrong body and so on but these are just attempts to put into words something nobody really can.

I have no doubt that there are gay boys who opt to be trans to get away from being thought of as gay. Or effeminate men who think it will just be easier to switch sides. I was neither of those things and a lot of the small core of trans people who existed in those long ago days before anyone even thought there would be legal recognition were like that.

We just knew we had no choice but to try to match our body with our mind in as far as possible, whilst knowing it would never really be enough. But it was preferable to the alternative.

So words cannot ever really explain the unexplainable, sadly.

I am in agreement that the explosion of numbers today suggests that much of what is being called trans nowadays has a different origin and a lot of those who would never have transitioned in the past are taking advantage of the rights granted or demanding easier access to those rights.

And it does not go down well when I say, as I do, and as others do, that we think the act as it stands is good enough and should not be amended to allow self declaration and removal of the built in safeguards that exist.

Safeguards not just for others to prevent abuse of the system but for those who will inappropriately transition and regret it.

What is very interesting to note is that there are allegedly 600,000 trans identifying people in the UK. Of those under 10,000 have gained legal recognition using the act that has existed for 14 years. And only about 1000 have altered their birth certificates.

You might ask why? Partly it is that they do not want to be medically assessed. If they were and they are trans then many of those missing 590,000 could have recognition now.

I feel that they want it offered on a plate without being willing to be properly studied by doctors and psychiatrists and psychologists to rule out other causes that maybe could be helped in other ways.

But I feel the law was created to assist a small number - probably of the order of the numbers that have used it to get recognition.

Now hundreds of thousands of others want to broaden the scope but to do so need the basis of the act to be significantly modified.

I understand their desire and I feel rather selfish arguing against this much wider freedom. But my view is that genuinely trans people could all get legal recognition now with a bit of effort. And if they choose not to put in that effort unless it is greatly reduced then you have to wonder why.

I made sure a got gender recognition and a new birth certificate the moment the law was passed. Even though financially I would have been better off financially getting my pension as a man as I would have otherwise done. But it was something I never even considered NOT doing when it was possible.

And that many thousands of people who say they are trans are only going to do the same if we make it as easy as filling out a form online I do tend to wonder why.

Here bloody here

I agree Butterfly.

I temped briefly and where we had a transwoman colleague and she just wanted to get on with her work quietly and I thought she was brave for expressing herself the way she wanted to knowing that she would get stares and comments etc. (I don't know what bathroom arrangements there were as I was in another office.)

I am sure also that more kindnesses could have been given back then too. But it is lightyears away from the legal defintions that have been changed and from what some TIM/ TRAs are demanding with self-ID.

We shouldn't be being asked what our gender is (on forms etc) as it does not matter, I don't think it ever matters or is relevant... we only need to know someone's biological sex.. and sometimes that is not relevant either.

I am sure there are many things we would disagree on, Jaycee (I have never met anyone I agreed with on everything ) but I think I agree with everything you have put in your last post. Btw I wasn't trying to diminish your experiences when I talked about tomboys etc - I was (perhaps clumsily) referring to the current trend of labelling increasing numbers of children as trans. Some of them may have grown up to feel as you do, but many wouldn't and I worry about unnecessary medical treatment based on false positives.

The problem with this define laws by biological sex, though, is how you police it. Do you trust to those who are effected to fess up? Do you have DNA monitors on every bathroom or changing room? Do you decide on appearance and inevitably end up evicting a woman who just happens to look wrong?

And if you create trans spaces (say a changing room) in order to protect women from the prospect of fully male bodied trans identifying women covered by the new act then that has consequences too.

Believe me I understand the concerns. I don't go out in the dark on my own without thinking of an escape route. I would be concerned too if I saw a person stripping next to me who was clearly male but was legally female. I fear the consequences of a sexual assault.

Trans women can share these experiences. And I have. I was sexually attacked on a bus in downtown LA by a man who probably had no idea I was trans - I was just vulnerable and available on the back of the bus. And I had to get off and run screaming into the streets of a city I did not know in an area that was as rough as hell and could not go to the police and report this creep and protect possibly another woman being attacked by him in the future. Something I have thought about often since.

But that was nearly 30 years ago. I had no legal recognition in the UK let alone in another country. I had a trans friend who was arrested and deported when they discovered she was trans around then. So here the lack of rights actively hurt other women, not just trans women.

So if you create a trans space, then yes, you may protect as few women from the stress or even threat of a trans woman with male features - but in that trans space you immediately put at risk many others - because a trans space by definition will comprise of what you call men, who would be trans women - some of whom have female bodies in many respects and some of whom have male anatomy - and trans men - with a similar two way split.

You deflect one problem and create several others.

There are no simple answers. But there do need to be answers I agree.

Jaycee Thank your posts. It is interesting to have your input.

You said I would be concerned too if I saw a person stripping next to me who was clearly male but was legally female. I fear the consequences of a sexual assault.

It seems to me that the sticking point comes when there can be male bodied people (ie with male genitalia) claiming or who can claim to legally be a woman.

I think most women have less objections to sharing spaces with transwomen who have had surgery for the obvious reasons, and as you referred to earlier, the effort clearly made. My transwoman colleague did not pass at all, but my assumption was that they were planning to get surgery and take hormones as part of curing the sense of dysphoria. I know realise that I may have been completely wrong to assume that!

The trouble is clear - humans of both sexes feel worried about males with penises raping them.

Seems like then in some particular circumstances we have to segregate humans with pensies from humans without. (what used to be male and female)

If it was up to me I would abolish the gender recognition act completely. People could wear what they wanted, have the surgery they wanted, but I would get rid of the harmful lie that you can change sex.

Jaycee every single trans person who comes here seems to be unable to describe the intense feeling they had that made them reject their biological sex. As you described, this feeling dominated your life for a long time, it seems quite remarkable that you're unable to describe these feelings that haunted you for so long. I suspect it is impossible to describe these feelings without resorting to stereotypes.

I find the phrase living as a woman deeply offensive to be honest. How does a person live as a woman? Which woman are they living as? The doctor ,the pilot, the disabled woman? The police woman? The stay at home mum, young woman, old woman? Which of these women were you living as? Women do not all live the same life. To me, the phrase living as a woman, simply means dressing and acting like a woman. Because that's all it can mean.

I don't find the term 'living as a woman' offensive at all.

A counter-point. One argument being RD benefitted from her self-ID politically/financially whereas transitioning transperople seldom benefit socially/economically.

Well that's not true is it? Do you think Lily Madigan or Heather Peto would be where they are within the Labour Party if they weren't trans? Would Paris Lees be anywhere near writing for The Guardian if they weren't trans? Would Munroe Bergdorf be being fairly high ranking advisory roles within politics and writing articles for Grazia about how the woman properly if they weren't trans? Would your man who went to jail for rape and murder be advising the House of Lords if he wasn't trans?

I don't find the term 'living as a woman' offensive at all.

It is offensive to many though because if you are a man then all 'living as a woman' can mean for you is buying into, often damaging, stereotypes and living as what you perceive as being a woman. And if you are a man you cannot possibly know what being a woman is, all you have is the patriarchally influenced perception of what being a woman is. Same as, as a white person, I cannot possibly know what it is to 'live as a black person'.

Gender is not a biological trait passed from parent to child in the way that race is. Race is something that is only available to certain people. Gender is available to all people.

Well yes, that's right. But most 'transgender' people aren't claiming to change 'gender' they are claiming to change sex. They are claiming that they were born the 'wrong sex' at birth (actually no, they say the conspiring doctors and nurses 'assigned them the wrong sex at birth, what utter bollocks) and that they have actually changed sex. So they were a man, now they are a woman and therefore have the right to use women's toilets, changing rooms, prisons and refuges.

A few of them do say that they are a man who feels more comfortable taking on what is traditionally seen as the role of a woman in society, dresses, make up etc. That is what 'gender' means.

But most of the TRAs who are influencing policy change claim they are absolutely women. And the definition of woman is adult human female. So they are very much talking about sex not gender.

You can't change your sex, it's passed down through your genes and influences everything about your life from the day you are born. Just like being black.

There is no difference.

I I think the problem is that it has become a meaningless phrase.

Both because adult women are generally much less constrained in presentation and lifestyle, so my life in my female body is very similar to my husbands life in his male body (eg we both work or care for our children, do housework and enjoy hobbies in very similar ways) except where biology comes into play. If we described our normal days over the last few years I doubt anyone would be able to pick which one was the male experience and which the female. Of course there will be many people who live with a more traditional gender set up too, but if we say that 'living as a woman' is living a stereotypical woman's life then that is very regressive. I hope that people with gender dysphoria who change gender under medical supervision are no longer expected to reject their pasts or become caricatures in order to tick their psychologists boxes.

Then too the modern variety of trans individuals appear to believe they can demand to be perceived as the opposite sex and so their lives are immediately the woman/man they demand to be recognised as regardless of how likely that seems. LM for example seems to me to be very much a young man in style and IW behaves like a middle aged man at least from the CBB filming. The ones that flip between personas never appear to be more than playacting / gaslighting. Are we really supposed to believe that 'Pips' has a woman's life on Fridays? It seems blatantly obvious that it is a complete farce, but no they win prizes created for females (not even just women).

I can't see how this can be walked back really. For myself it makes me super suspicious of people who look like they might be pretending to be women, and I hate that as I'm totally in favour of being gender non conforming. Gender is harmful but sex sometimes really matters.

You can find a phrase inaccurate without finding it offensive.

Jayceedove "Being a woman is about more than biology. "

What is the "more" there please?

Will try to respond to as many posts as I can.

Unplugme, yes I can easily understand the concerns over self identifying trans women who have not taken any significant steps to do more than, in effect, normalise the dressing up that they may have been doing at home or in clubs for years.

The essence of the GRA as it stands is that to get one you need to establish three things.

1: Persistence of insistence - that being trans is not something that has just come to you but has been a long standing dominating factor in your life that drove you to transition as fully as possible.

2: That you have been through the checks and balances to establish and potential cause that can be treatable in other ways. For instance, brain tumours can generate delusions. A number of psycho-sexual illnesses can create impressions that might lead to distorted perceptions of your identity. The reason that medical assessment occurs is to protect the individual from themselves as much as to prevent someone acting inappropriately to the detriment of society.

3: That you have proven that transition has benefited both your life psychologically and without consequences and that you have been successfully able to integrate into society in what you regard as your true self. Rather than be a drain on society and run the risk of dissatisfaction with transition and wish to flip back.

Each of those seem to establish both the depth of the dysphoria, to assure there are not other causes masquerading as dysphoria and to maximise the likelihood that the transition is a major factor in life that will be permanent and not a 'try it and see' lifestyle experiment.

This is probably why it has had such low uptake from those who identify as trans. They will perceive these checks and balances as too arduous.

Society will have a different perception I would think. That the checks and balances judge sincerity of intent and smoothness of integration with others.

It is easy for trans people to be very selfish. This is an incredibly introspective experience that you live with from very early on and it can become consuming. So some will forget the way this can have devastating effects on others around them and society as a whole.

A good law balances both these things. As it stands I think the GRA is a good law, but it is at risk of being turned into s bad one by some of the, for me, excessively liberal changes that are being considered.

Personally I do not think it will get that far and that wiser heads will prevail having seen the disquiet.

Terfinator - living as a woman is medical terminology used by doctors in the RLE - Real Life Experience - test that they impose on anyone seeking gender reassignment.

Or at least did in the days when things have not been blurred by not wanting to offend people.

I doubt any transgender person perceives it in the way you seem to think. It is just the exam we have to pass before anyone gets approval for surgery and then to get a Gender Recognition Certificate.

In my experience in the early days all doctors and surgeons involved in this field were men and imposed their ideals onto their patients. They were in some cases the very people many radical feminists perceive as being the trans patients doing this - wishing to create stereotype ideals from their own imagination.

That's what these doctors did - they would usually only further those patients they believed would 'pass' and would offer ideas of dress and make up from a male perspective.

I saw this early on and would do what it took to shut the guy up and then got on with being myself and acting as I wanted. It was an accommodation.

Happily there are more women doctors and surgeons today in general and in this field so that old school attempt to mould trans women in male doctor's image is less prevalent. But might still be a factor.

The trans women I know from those days have blended into society pretty seamlessly in many different roles. As diverse as any other women in relationships, style and appearance. And in a wide range of occupations. We really are not seeking to follow a pattern. We are just being ourselves in the way that I would have thought Feminism would champion.

We have brought a lot of diversity whilst being perceived by those around us as women, regardless of whether you think we are. Because until very recently most of us did not announce ourselves as trans or fight for rights or make a song and dance about being special because we are trans.

This is a creation of the post millennium generation, social media and much wider definition of what transgender is away from the original one of transsexual.

We all just settled quietly and happily into finally being ourselves and got on with life hardly ever thinking about being trans. Events around us have forced us to speak out and defend ourselves in ways that just were not necessary until very recently.

Despite having published 50 books and made radio and TV show I personally never wrote or spoke in public about trans matters once until about 3 years ago when this all kicked off. Now I seem to do it all the time.

As for describing the feeling that makes us reject biology and none can do it and it being built around stereotypes. I empathise with your frustration and understand it because, believe me, all my adult life I have been trying to answer the same question to myself.

Unfortunately, it is just one of those things that is indefinable because it is a nagging, gnawing sense of self within that just feels at odds with the perception of that self from others around you. At first you presume this is just a part of growing up. Then you realise that body and mind just seem like halves of two different people and your mind drives you to adapt the body to match.

I know that sounds bland and diffuse, but that's how it was. It genuinely feels innate. I do not know if it is or not. Only that I knew something was wrong from about 3 or 4 and more or less what was wrong by about 8. And from then on it was a quest to put right what I perceived as an error of biology.

It was not about clothes or toys or playmates or any of that because I had a brother and no sister, so was not envious. But equally I was raised in a happy family with no real restraints on what I did. So I could have quite easily coped by being myself if it was all about things I wanted to do or wear or who I wanted to be with.

In many ways it would be much easier if it were that simple. I would just tell you and let you draw your own conclusions.

You likely will anyhow. But I cannot make things up to persuade you. I can only tell you what it was like. And I am as baffled as any of you as to how and why it occurred.

Because - believe me - no child would choose to be trans. It is something that nags at you like a pain in your inner core that just never goes away and pushes you on and on to find a way to make things right. Nobody wants that to take over their life and I can well understand why in earlier times so many trans kids will have self harmed or attempted suicide. It is deeply distressing o your whole sense of being.

Imintheclub....As I have said NO trans woman who transitioned up to the past 15 years or so would be claiming they 'changed sex'. As I noted earlier you were repeatedly advised that you were having your gender reassigned but NOT changing sex because at present that is medically impossible.

And you had to sign a waiver to acknowledge that before they operated.

However, equally I do not think most transsexual women such as myself would ever term themselves a man. Or even really say they were one. As a trans child you never perceive yourself as a boy and often over react in rejecting it but, of course, as you grow old enough to understand grasp the reality and so integrate it as that part of yourself you wish to escape from as far as is medically possible.

Nobody is arguing that biology is meaningless or not important or that any trans person alters their biology entirely. That might be possible one day and there are things they can do now that they could not do in my day and it is believed that trans women will be able to give birth within a decade and experiments are already being planned.

Fifty years from now who know what might be possible. So there are shifts on the sex spectrum occurring. At present only shifts not total transitions but in terms of hormone make up a medically and surgically transitioned trans woman can be thought pregnant by an unaware doctor. Which is why we all share our history with doctors.

So trans women are not biologically female, I agree. But we are also in many cases a long way from being biologically male other than, say, in terms of chromosomes.

But then there are women as defined by XX chromosomes who have lived as men all their lives unaware of that until some need for testing occurs.

How we define a person as male/female or man/women is partly down to what our body says and partly down to how society understands the meaning of those things. Our understanding changing all the time.

I agree that you should not define sex by self declaration. But in return I would ask you to accept that how you perceive a person as male or female owes something to more than just DNA. In a modern world we are slowly appreciating that.

I understand the passion many of you feel about definitions and the impression of men usurping onto your territory to the detriment of women. I see that danger too if we dilute the concept of what being transgender is too far away from transsexual towards self perception of someone who is as biologically male as they always were.

That would be wrong. But so would assuming that all transgender people are interlopers who are engaging in a pretence for nefarious reasons. Many of us just want to be ourselves and be accepted for who we are without changing definitions.

The Gender Recognition Act changes GENDER not sex to make it possible to live a normal life using documents that depend on that. But under 10,000 people in the UK have one of those. Not hundreds of thousands who self identify.

The only place you can change some marker that says SEX is on the birth certificate. And only a few hundred people in the UK have done that because it requires medical support to do so. At present that is.

Even then the original remains as a matter of record, I should point out. The 'new' certificate is mostly to be used by the fully transitioned person in situations where one is required.

Jayceedove I wanted to thank you for your eloquent posts on this thread. I am definitely gender critical but still trying to figure out where I stand on a number of aspects within that, and understanding your experiences is so helpful. Thank you for sharing.

I think this in particular is an important thing to remember:

This is an incredibly introspective experience that you live with from very early on and it can become consuming. So some will forget the way this can have devastating effects on others around them and society as a whole.

Not to excuse behaviour that we find unpalatable, offensive or dangerous, but to remember that it doesn't come from nowhere.

Riverside - being a woman is surely obviously more than about just biology, just as being a man is.

A little puzzled this needs explanation. It is about who you are and your personality and how you interact with human beings and the way you live your life.

It is about being a person.

All I am saying is that we are bot defined just by biology but by who we are and what we do.