To think that the vast majority of people do not feel they have a gender identity?

[Galvantulang]

My company has recently started suggesting that we can record our gender identity and preferred pronouns (these would be publicly displayed on the intranet) on our HR record system. It's optional for now, but almost everyone I asked at work when the email came out went "eh?".

Apart from the data protection issues of collecting all this extra information, AIBU to think that the majority of people don't consider themselves to have a gender identity, just their sex?

i.e. you don't identify as a man or woman, you just... are one?

Watching laws and amendments to bills being proposed (especially in Scotland) based on recognising gender identity rather than biological sex, seems somewhat unreal.

Um...

Yabu = I feel like I have a gender identity.
Yanbu = I do not feel like I have a gender identity.

[quote OldCrone]I was referring to the GIRES figures in this post.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4158457-To-think-that-the-vast-majority-of-people-do-not-feel-they-have-a-gender-identity?msgid=104509610[/quote]
I know, from the GIRES link in the post

These figures indicate that about 1% of the UK population, some 650,000 people, are likely to be gender incongruent to some degree.

So anyway there's poodles right and there's wolves and ... no, I lost the will to live sorry.

And it is a shame because there are some interesting things amongst the condescending, patronising, disingenuous crap

You'll have to point them out to me!

So anyway there's poodles right and there's wolves and ... no, I lost the will to live sorry.

What's the difference between a "trans woman" and any of the other "gender incongruent" males? What's the breakdown?

So anyway there's poodles right and there's wolves and ... no, I lost the will to live sorry.

jj, that's a first, you've made me laugh.

We can easily define a poodle and we can easily define a wolf. What is the difference here?

From the link in the post about GIRES:
data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/women-and-equalities-committee/transgender-equality/written/19292.html

These figures indicate that about 1% of the UK population, some 650,000 people, are likely to be gender incongruent to some degree. So far, only about 30,000 have sought medical help for gender dysphoria.

Fewer than 5% have undergone medical transition. And that's any sort of transition - hormones, breast augmentation/mastectomy, ffs etc.

Slowly losing the will to live.

A self-selected gender identity does not override the sex-based stereotypes one has been raised with. Feeling like you don't quite fit with what is expected of you doesn't mean that you're not soaking up ideas about how much or how little you should speak, what 'being nice' or 'being strong' looks like, etc.

If you look into the history of the treatment of intersex children you will find lots of information on how the understanding of gender identity has influenced treatment protocols.

I have jj1968. Much of this "understanding of gender identity" derives from and is rooted in the horrifically inhumane experiments John Money did on the Reimer twins. I'm astounded you would refer to what people with DSDs call a human rights violation as some kind of benign emergence of understanding.

And they still get it wrong quite often which is why intersex groups universally support Self ID.

This is doubly incorrect.

First of all, only 2 in 1000 babies are born with ambiguous genitalia requiring specialist input to ascertain the sex of the child. In one in 20 of these children, the results are inconclusive and sex is assigned after consultation with specialists and the parents' child. (Usually based on anticipated later development and practical considerations, but parents are told that this is an educated guess and may not work out for the child.)

One in ten of these children later decides that their sex assigned at birth does not represent the way they see themselves and change their sex. (Not via a GRC, but a different mechanism, because this is a different issue from healthy people who wish to legally change their (wholly unambiguous) biological sex.)

This amounts to one person across the whole of the UK every two years.

Percentage wise this means that 95% of children born with ambiguous genitalia have their sex determined through medical investigation, 5% have it assigned and 0.5% later decide this assignment is wrong for them. I would not call that "quite often". Especially when you look at the absolute numbers.

And second, what people with DSDs are asking is to allow children whose sex is ambiguous to decide for themselves whether they wish to undergo corrective surgeries or not and only when they are ready to understand the consequences.

That is not support for legal self-declaration of sex for people who have no DSDs. Which is why a number of their advocacy organisations have repeatedly demanded not to have their complicated medical histories co-opted in aid of a group who don't share their medical conditions and who advocate for ever younger children to undergo medical procedures whose consequences they cannot understand.

@OldCrone

From the link in the post about GIRES: data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/women-and-equalities-committee/transgender-equality/written/19292.html

These figures indicate that about 1% of the UK population, some 650,000 people, are likely to be gender incongruent to some degree. So far, only about 30,000 have sought medical help for gender dysphoria.

Fewer than 5% have undergone medical transition. And that's any sort of transition - hormones, breast augmentation/mastectomy, ffs etc.

Slowly losing the will to live.

Of those 650,000 around half will be people born physically female. The remaining 315,000 will be made up of non binary (or similar) physical males, those who see themselves as cross dressers or transvestites, gender queer or gender fluid, or trans women.

Estimates for the number of trans women - that is those who fully socially or medically transition, and as such would use women's spaces - usually vary from around 0.1-0.3% of people overall. A meta-analysis in the US* which examined specifically binary trans identities put the rate of both transgender men and women in the US at 0.39%, assuming they were distrubuted evenly that would make 0.2% of the US population trans women.

So in the UK we're probably looking at between 65,000 - 195,000 trans women. How many of the 30,000 people GIRES referred to who have presented for treatment are trans women and how many trans men is unclear. How many people have sought treatment since those figures were calculated - they are quite old - is also unknown. How many people are self medicating and won't appear in the figures is equally unknown. As is how many trans women don't particularly like their penis much but not so much that they decide to have a major operation. And most importantly how many people want treatment but haven't presented yet is not really known although the Dutch research suggests it could be as many as 100,000 in the UK (made up of trans men and trans women).

These are the figures you deduced your claim that 'most trans women are quite happy with their penis from'. That statement is completely without foundation. You made it up.

Of those 650,000 around half will be people born physically female.

There is no reason to suppose that, at all.

I'd assume that the largest group of these people are cross dressing males. "Non binary" wasn't really a thing when the GIRES figures were from. It's exploded, as a teen trend, since then. As has the idea of young girls and women identifying as male.

With regards to those males other than cross dressers, I simply don't believe that gender dysphoria affects all the people who claim to have it. And I don't see that any of the others require special rights, apart from universal human rights to not be discriminated against for who they are, or harassed or to be the victim of violence.

Estimates for the number of trans women - that is those who fully socially or medically transition, and as such would use women's spaces -

Are you suggesting that only a very small group out of the male sexed people who identify as transgender will demand access to female safe space? What evidence do you have of this? Do all the rest use male facilities?

@Ereshkigalangcleg

Of those 650,000 around half will be people born physically female.

There is no reason to suppose that, at all.

The Netherlands reported assigned male 0.7%, and assigned female 0.6%; Belgium reported assigned male 1.1%, and assigned female 0.8%

So slightly more trans women than trans men in that research you're right but not much. That may well have caught up now trans men have overtaken trans women at gender clinics. The previous GIRES estimate of gender variant people produced in 2011 assumed a 50/50 split would develop and that there were 500,000 gender incongruent people in the UK

The adults who present emerge from a large, mainly invisible, reservoir of people, who experience somedegree of gender variance. They may number 300,000, a prevalence of 600 per 100,000, of whom 80% were assigned as boys at birth. However, the number would be nearly 500,000, a prevalence of 1,000 per 100,000 (1%), if the gender balance among gender variant people is equal, as seems increasingly likely.

www.gires.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Prevalence2011.pdf

I forgot the link to the US study: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227946/

But yeah, all these figures are estimates. There's no way you can come to any firm conclusions using them.

If you look at the 2011 figures from GIRES that these are based on they assumed an equal number of trans women and trans men.

So slightly more trans women than trans men in that research you're right but not much. That may well have caught up now trans men have overtaken trans women at gender clinics.

I doubt it, because at the same time there's a huge influx of young males identifying as trans on the internet. Anecdotally I would say it's more than women identifying as male. But that's just my perception. Other opinions are available. Anyway lots of these males seem quite fond of their penises and not in any great hurry to get rid of them, which was the point.

And which we know is a dealbreaker for U.K. women to consent to them being in our female spaces like toilets and changing rooms. As we have discussed.

And still you go on 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Are you suggesting that only a very small group out of the male sexed people who identify as transgender will demand access to female safe space? What evidence do you have of this?

I don't have any evidence other than the experience of the last 50 years or so. Trans women have been using womens spaces for decades, and even if you dispute that, which I find pretty bizarre, you must surely concede they have for the last decade or so. Are the toilets and changing rooms full of predatory cross dressers? Are they in countries and states where trans inclusion has been normal for years? Is this a problem in New York or San Francisco?

So do you have statistical evidence that males who identify as transwomen are less likely to be predatory than other males?

My views are not trans medicalist, I never said dysphoria or a desire for medical treatment was essential to being trans.

You continually make need-based arguments that only apply to people who suffer from gender dysphoria. Most of the time your arguments only focus on fully transitioned transsexuals.

Whether deliberately or not, this obscures the fact that the legal reforms sought by trans rights activists in the UK are intended to encompass all gender-variant individuals, including males who seek erotic pleasure in crossdressing.

The existing gate-keeping and safeguarding conditions included in the current laws already accommodate your preferred group of people, but this accommodation must take women's rights to single sex provisions into account and so sometimes we have the right to exclude that group entirely.

Judging from your comments, this seems to be unacceptable to you, so you argue in aid of a position that doesn't just allow your group access rights but all gender-variant males. And gifts them to predators.

A position that would deny women their sex-based protections. That this means excluding entire subgroups of female people? Well, bully for us, isn't it?

Whether deliberately or not, this obscures the fact that the legal reforms sought by trans rights activists in the UK are intended to encompass all gender-variant individuals, including males who seek erotic pleasure in crossdressing.

The existing gate-keeping and safeguarding conditions included in the current laws already accommodate your preferred group of people, but this accommodation must take women's rights to single sex provisions into account and so sometimes we have the right to exclude that group entirely.

Yes, we do. And if women's feelings were considered at all, it would be unthinkable that anything else would happen.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

I'd assume that the largest group of these people are cross dressing males. "Non binary" wasn't really a thing when the GIRES figures were from. It's exploded, as a teen trend, since then. As has the idea of young girls and women identifying as male.

Transvestism has a prevalence of around 2% to 6% in the adult male population. With around 26m adult males in the UK, this amounts to between half a million and two million crossdressers.

They are not typically included in that 1% estimate of people who identify as trans.

jj1968 is quite right that most of these males will not claim to identify as women. But is quite wrong in asserting that they would not seek to use women's spaces.

Because they already do. We have hundreds and hundreds of women sharing the negative impact that this has on their lives on the Feminism Chat board.

We have entire threads where the wives of crossdressing men who later go on to identify as trans share their personal accounts of abuse at the hands of these men. Who very happily use women's spaces when "en femme" despite having neither socially nor medically transitioned.

And we know self-id has been abused in every single country that has introduced it.

That's the reason why there is now a worldwide grassroots movement of women and women's rights groups opposing self-id. In many countries this is still only emerging, but we are talking to women from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania about the problems they are experiencing.

Even CEDAW has taken note and raised concerns about women's sex-based rights being superseded by self-id policies in its most recent country report on Portugal, published in November 2020.

So the handwaving away of our concerns by claiming there are no problems in other countries just won't do it anymore. Women across the world are talking to each other. And we are bloody furious. Organising to push back against this ideology that sees us as walking stereotypes. And we won't all be gone in 5 or 10 years as jj1968 hopes. I might be. But there will be millions more of my sisters standing up for our rights by then.

Transvestism has a prevalence of around 2% to 6% in the adult male population. With around 26m adult males in the UK, this amounts to between half a million and two million crossdressers.

They are not typically included in that 1% estimate of people who identify as trans.

Ah, thank you, I didn't know that. Well well.

Even CEDAW has taken note and raised concerns about women's sex-based rights being superseded by self-id policies in its most recent country report on Portugal, published in November 2020.

That's encouraging.

Well, you do have to tell them about this crap, otherwise they won't know.

Unfortunately for Scotland, Engender (who keep publicly declaring that they do not canvass or represent their members nor claim to speak for all Scottish women) keep speaking for all Scottish women internationally and so failed to raise any issues around women's rights being undermined at our last UK country review.

I mean, they didn't fail, exactly. They zealously endorse and promote transgender ideology and legislation after all. It wasn't an oversight. They just aren't concerned.

Another sweeping generalisation based on no evidence. How on earth can you know?

It doesn't matter what we post, or how much evidence we bring to bear, jj will post some variation of the above. Because it's only women, us women, who are asserting these things, and everyone knows we aren't credible, since we have that most untrustworthy of organs, a vagina.

jj, on the other hand, knows oodles of women - simply oodles! - who disagree with what we say, and of course they are all absolutely real and to be trusted implicitly.