AIBU to feel confused and old about transgender issues.

[confusedandold]

I was born in 1976 so 43 years old. During school, I don't recall any children in my school having issues with their gender. There may have been some but none that I was away of. I had no experience of transgender people apart from a vague memory of seeing a man in women clothing walking up the road and being fascinated by it.

Transgender issues have never been at the forefront of my mind. I feel that I'm very accepting of other people's life choices and that people have a right to be happy in their lives whatever that means for them.

Lately, I feel completely confused by transgender issues. It has never been something that I'd given much thought to but I get completely an utterly confused by the terminology. Non-binary, cisgender etc this is all wording that I had never encountered before. Everyone seems to be talking about trans right and gender issues and I don't understand where this has suddenly come from. Is it that more people have issues around their gender? Is it fashionable to be gender-neutral? Is it just that people now feel more comfortable in expressing how they feel inside? Is there greater acceptance? I'm returning to the UK after 10 years abroad and this is a topic that was never really discussed when I left.

I guess I'm asking because I don't want to inadvertently offend anyone by using incorrect terminology. As shocking as this may sound but when I was at school mixed-race people were referred to as 'half-caste', even mixed-race people in my school referred to themselves in this way, now this is a huge no-no. Times change, language changes and it is so easy to offend while having no intention whatsoever of doing so.

@ACNH

They all have XX or XY chromosomes. They are neither of those genders.

Is this a reply to my post? I didn't mention anything about genders. I said that everyone who calls themselves non-binary is either female (a woman) or male (a man).

Female/woman and male/man are sexes, not genders. I thought you said you understood the difference between sex and gender.

@ACNH

They all have XX or XY chromosomes. They are neither of those genders.

Sex. You mean sex. The XX and XY chromosomes (barring a few individuals with DSDs which can only be understood as DSDs against a backdrop of sexual anisogamy) are to do with sex.

Gender identity - whether couched in terms of "womanliness", "manliness" or "somewhere-in-between-and-fluctuating-i-ness" - is only loosely tied to sex (insofar as I can make sense of it at all - the more people try to explain it to me, the more I begin to feel like I'm watching someone try to nail jelly to the wall).

As I said earlier, all attempts at this jelly-nailing process that I have watched (and I have watched many over the years) come down either to "but I have this internal feeling" or "well, ultimately being womanly comes down to [insert list of sex stereotypes here]".

They all have XX or XY chromosomes. They are neither of those genders.

Can you define 'gender' here please? If sex is based on chromosomes and potential to produce a particular gamete, what is gender based on?

being a woman means a lot more than that to me.

What does being a woman mean to you?

What things have shaped your experience as a woman that are categorically not tied to you having a female body?

And I mean specifically as a woman rather than just as a person in that last question?

@ThatsHowWeRowl that’s really good question and something I’m going to have a good think about.

With regards to others I feel like I’ve run my course there 😂

@ThatsHowWeRowl

And I mean specifically as a woman rather than just as a person in that last question?

I’m assuming you mean that make me feel like a woman?

In the 1970's
people who competed in Women's sport who had a Y chromosome
were called cheats

what has changed ?

I’m assuming you mean that make me feel like a woman?

Sorry, I wasn't that clear there!

I meant what things have shaped your experience as a woman (rather than as a person) that are nothing to do with having a female body? Yes, I guess what things make you feel like a woman that aren't anything to do with your body? How do you know you are a woman?

ACNH I am a woman. I don't 'identify as a woman'. I don't 'feel like a woman'. I am just an adult female human. That is a biologically determined fact which says nothing about my personality or whether I fit any gender stereotypes.

Could I be non binary? How would I know?

@Gwynfluff being a woman means a lot more than that to me.

You asked what was the commonality of all women. I do think we can come together on the basis of certain lived experiences, I said that in my reply. But that it not what makes women, women - which is what you asked and it wouldn’t be inclusive of all women. It really is the biology and reproductive capacity.

The massive problem here is that no one knows how another person thinks or feels.

One non binary person might feel and think totally differently from another non binary person.

Lots of people don't have an internal feeling of being male or female. They just feel like people. Do they feel the same as a non binary person? Which non binary person.

Basing laws and changing social custom to accommodate for something that cannot be seen or proved and in fact means different things to different individuals is a very poor idea.

@ShinyFootball

The massive problem here is that no one knows how another person thinks or feels.

One non binary person might feel and think totally differently from another non binary person.

Lots of people don't have an internal feeling of being male or female. They just feel like people. Do they feel the same as a non binary person? Which non binary person.

Basing laws and changing social custom to accommodate for something that cannot be seen or proved and in fact means different things to different individuals is a very poor idea.

This is the absolute crux of the matter.

You can't base law on the private, interior thought processes of individuals. You can only base law on what is publicly verifiable.

Going back to the "50 to 60% of trans-identifying prisoners in the male estate are sex offenders, which means they're actually statistically more likely to be sex offenders than a randomly selected male prisoner (a mere 20% of randomly selected male prisoners being sex offenders."

I don't for a moment actually think this means that transwomen are more likely to be sex offenders. What I think this means is that those of us with reservations about self-ID are absolutely right: predatory men will lie (and frequently, not just rarely) out of criminal self interest and a desire to make their offending easier by gaining access to a literally captive pool of victims.

And because we can't see inside people's heads to see if they are telling the truth or not, we have to rely on the judgement of experts such as criminal psychologists - hence the need for gatekeeping, and the need for some spaces which are segregated by sex, not gender feelings.

Follow-up to my previous post - and I think sex offending - the most male of offending patterns and the most violent and predatory of misogynistic behaviours - should be an automatic bar to a GRC.

If you've raped or sexually assaulted a woman, you have shown beyond all shadow of a doubt that you should not be taken seriously in your protestations of "inner femininity."