To wonder if no one on Mumsnet believes that trans women are women?

[StolenCookie]

I’ve been lurking on the site for months, enjoying AIBU and laughing at some of the posts.

But yesterday I commented on a topic regarding the language around trans women, and the views expressed were very extreme.

Is there anyone at all on Mumsnet who, like me, did not realise how anti-trans this site is? Does anyone believe, unreservedly, that trans women are women?

YABU - trans women are not women.
YANBU - I support trans rights

So what is the difference between a transwoman and a woman? Can a woman be a transwoman? If not, why not?

Sea horses are horses!!

But the point re supporting both womens rights and trans rights is that when it's all smooth sailing, yes, people can all rub along nicely.

It's the parts of life where people are vulnerable where the conflicts lie and the knotty issues crop up. As in prisons, sports, healthcare, refuges. The answer in terms of protecting people (and yes women are the more vulnerable party here) is addressing these points diligently, not simply pretending that anybody can be whoever they like, or going off down a sidetrack about DSDs and pushing for a 'definition' when if we don't try to ban accurate descriptors, everyone knows what a woman is just as everyone knows what a transwoman or a man, or a trans man is.

Many people with DSDs have asked not to be brought into this discussion. Unless saying that trans people all have DSDs then it is not relevant at all.

Sooooo, by this arguement, trans women are not women.

You still haven't said whether you think Rachel Dolezal is black.

Could you clarify? So you do think gender exists and is different to sex

I think gender is the expectations of behaviour, occupation, gender etc that are imposed on people on account of their sex. These may vary across cultures and across time.

I do not think gender is an attribute of a person, that is I don't think a person 'has a gender'.

Eg women with AIS have xy chromosomes. Classified as women

well, socially women. But certainly no egg production, given internal testes, lack of Fallopian tubes, lack of uterus and eggs and blind vaginas.

And - once again - the DSD community have asked NOT to be included in this debate.

Transwomen don’t have DSDs, they are men with a special gender feeling.

They’re trans women. Good luck to them, but they’re not biologically female.
i sppport a trans person’s right to exist freely in society - go for it! - but don’t take biological women’s rights away.

The prevalence of AIS is a lot higher than that. Even if it were that low thats still 100,000s of women around the world who are not xx, so it poses a significant problem to your definition of woman.

So they aren't the same then. Thanks for that. What's the difference then?

If someone tells me they don’t feel right in their body, I believe them

But apparently you don't need dysphoria to be trans these days. You could be completely fine existing in a male body but still be a woman.

No it doesn't. My definition referred to the type of body that has developed along a particular pathway, not to chromosomes. This definition specifically takes account of the women you describe.

None of this is evidence that sex isn't binary.

And it has NOTHING to do with whether transwomen are women.

People with CAIS are phenotypically female but with XY chromosomes. They are usually raise as girls. Most people do not have an issue with this, as they ae completely unable to respond to testosterone or even exogenic synthetic testosterone.
Again, you are talking about a DSD.
Again, 0.018% of the population.
There was a thread on here not too long ago about people with CAIS, in which some extreme people believed that due to the male chromosomal makeup of XY, they should be treated as male etc and denied access to female spaces. I argued against this, and would still argue against it.

This has NOTHING to do with trans people, DSDs occur no more frequently in the trans community than in the general population.
When you take DSDs out of the equation, biological sex is very simple. And that's why this issue is raised again and again ad nauseum, because you really NEED it to try to blur the lines of what it is to be male or female.

It's not a blurred line.
And it NOTHING to do with trans women or trans "rights".

And the DSD community has been loud and clear that they WANT NO PART of this debate - or does that not matter to you?

Ok so gender as an attribute of a person doesn’t exist. What I would call person’s “gender” (my belief / understanding / embodiment of self as female) is the same as/ indistinguishable from/ (determined by ) my sex.

Tandora you have (or are pretending to have) epically, epically misunderstood the GC feminist position.

so To sum up the argument from the TWAW cohort

TWAW because they say they are
no one can define woman and man
DSD
dubious article that doesn’t say what they think it says
CLOWNFISH

No one is saying they are the same… !!

They are both women.

That’s not saying they are the same.

Incidentally Tandora, while you have been trying to unpick our definitions of biological woman, have you made any progress on a definition of social-construct woman?

It has everything to do with the definition of female which is what I was seeking to clarify. (Prevalence is irrelevant, but in any case your prevalence statistics are wrong.)

You don’t need to explain what AIS is to me- I am aware.

Women / females with AIS have XY chromosomes. So again, poses a problem to a definition of female that relies on karyotype doesn’t it ?

Individuals with AIS are infertile. They do not a body that is formed to promote the production of large gametes (ova). They do not have fallopian tubes, eggs, a uterus. In keeping with their XY status they have testes.

And, again, AIS is a DSD and individuals with DSDs have asked to be kept out of the debate.

So you agree they are not the same. Great. So why can't the nomenclature and policy reflect that?

Also - depressing fact.

Over 700 (!!) votes and over 80% saying trans women are not women.

Mumsnet really is as anti-trans as I worried it was.

@stolen so you are saying there are male women and female women and they both belong in the same spaces? That there is no difference

No one is saying they are the same… !! They are both women. That’s not saying they are the same.

Ok, so what is the difference then?

I think the main problem is we are using different definitions of "gender".

We have a couple on this thread who use it mean "gender identity', an "inner sense of self" which relates to "feeling like" a man/woman.

The way most on this thread use "gender" is different.

"Woman" and "Man" to us mean adult human females and males.

Gender refers to the social expectations placed upon women and men, and girls and boys (adult and child males and females). So the idea that women are feminine, that dresses are made for women and not men, is gender. The idea that women should shave and men should not is gender.

So femininity/masculinity or gender roles are what we refer to as gender. It's all the social stuff expected of the sexes.

Disorders of sexual development don't diso