Are mumsneters TERFs

[ChedderGorgeous]

I started a thread on the new taskmaster line up here. This greatly angered a taskmaster fb group who screenshot the conversation and agreed all mumsnetters were TERFs. AIBU to suggest this isn't the general perception of others when you have mentioned mumsnet ? Ps. I still haven't heard of John Robins !

I don’t think I can outline the criteria for being a woman.

Then it's a completely useless category. Come on, you know it means adult human female people @Tandora you just think a few males should be able to be validated as such. Enough of the disingenuous nonsense.

Ok so in your mind, a woman can be male or female and I am not a woman. OK. Do you think as a biological female I still need separated spaces from men? why? And which sports team should I play in? should there be one just for agender females? or just agender males and females?

I really disagree that good science is about rejecting the existence of things that we are having trouble explaining or defining.
Yes we can all come up with simple explanations and definitions for things, that’s not what science is. Science is about searching to understand the empirical work in all its complexity, even if it challenges many of our pre-existing assumptions.

Tandora you are refusing to answer why a mixed sex group of people need their own sports.

I really disagree that good science is about rejecting the existence of things that we are having trouble explaining or defining.

Yes, that's what many religious people say too. Are you a theist? Or agnostic.

So just to be clear @Tandora you have got to the point where 'woman' to you means 'human' but you don't know what else. Just any person.

So a TW is someone who rearranges their entire lives and identity to become 'just any person'.

Is there a difference between a woman and a man, do you think? Trans people certainly seem to believe so. Is there a single difference you could name?

I'm also interested in thoughts on this. But I appreciate I'm bombarding slightly.

there are so many different ways of being a woman

No, there is only one way of being a woman. That is being an adult human female. There are many different ways that women live their life, there are many different personalities that women have. But the only thing that makes them a woman is their sex.

I don’t think I can outline the criteria for being a woman You can't define it as there is no way to define being a woman that includes males. If your beliefs held up, you could define woman and the rest of your beliefs would flow from. But you can't. And that shows your beliefs don't stack up.

Your post is just verbage to defend why you can't defend your beliefs.

For a small minority of people gender identity is not predicted by physical sex. We don’t yet know why, although there is lots of interesting research looking into this
Again, your starting position is that gender identity exists. But that is not the starting position. Gender identity is a hypothesis that has been created to explain why some people have sex dysphoria. You would have to create research to test this hypothesis. You might wish to say, well if gender identity is what makes someone behave as a man or woman, lets look at areas we have very high evidence for difference in male and female behaviour, such as violent crime stats and sexual offending stats, and see if the population of people who claim a female gender identity at odds with their male sex, show female patterns of behaviour in these areas.

We don't have much data on this, but the data from male prisoners claiming a female GI, is that they are sex offenders at a higher rate than the male population.

But again, you cannot invent a hypothesis of gender identity and then just claim it is true and expect society to organise around this claim. You have to evidence that gender identity is real and define it.

Gender identity is a hypothesis that has been created to explain why some people have sex dysphoria

Thats not true, gender “identity” development is something that has been explored scientifically as an ordinary process of childhood development, without any reference to gender (or sex) dysphoria. In the literature on this, however, the term “identity” isn’t used, it is called “gender constancy”. But it is the same thing.

But again, you cannot invent a hypothesis of gender identity and then just claim it is true and expect society to organise around this claim. You have to evidence that gender identity is real and define it.

This is the heart of the matter. People need compelling evidence for this.

Gender constancy is absolutely not the same thing as gender identity as used by gender ideologists.

Your last sentence is correct about what science is. Science comes up with hypotheses and then then rigorously tests them. If they stand up, they become theories. Which again keep on being tested. Those which withstand this, become accepted ( evolution; the definition of sex). Theories which cannot withstand this scrutiny get abandoned. This is what the scientific method of investigation is.

But you are not doing that. You have taken a hypothesis and are stating it is fact. That is not science. That is not logic. That is not reason. That is not a fair or just way to argue.

I really disagree that good science is about rejecting the existence of things that we are having trouble explaining or defining This is not what I was saying. I outline what the scientific method is above.

Yes we can all come up with simple explanations and definitions for things, that’s not what science is The definition of woman or female that GC women (and scientists) use is not simplistic. They are workable and accurate definitions that withstand scrutiny. That is why they have withstood the test of time and withstand argument from proponents of gender ideology. These definitions work. Adult Human Female are categories of being that only apply to woman, no other living thing has all three of these. No woman fails to have all three of these. That is why the definition is accurate and works and withstands scrutiny. The ideology you are defending cannot define these terms because your ideology does not work. You have no categories which apply only to woman and to men who claim a female gender identity, and which apply to all women and men who claim a female gender identity . And that is why your belief system cannot define woman.

With respect, you are using a lot of verbage to defend why you can't defend your ideas.

If your ideas were defensible, you would be able to articulate why they are, rather than having to spend your time explaining why you can't defend them.

I don’t know who these “gender ideologists” are and I certainly don’t claim to speak for them.

But gender constancy is exactly what I mean by gender identity in the context of all my posts above. As mentioned, I don’t really like the word “identity” but it is more commonly used / understood these days than “constancy”. Constancy isn’t really the best word either. But all both terms mean is a settled understand of self as a boy/ girl/ man/ woman (or other), (although admittedly “other” isn’t usually contemplated in the literature referencing constancy).

I thought gender identity in childhood development was about children realising the difference between girls and boys?

Young children see a person with long hair and assume girl, because long hair = girl. The same person could get their hair cut and the child assumes boy because short hair =boy.

As a child develops they realise that its sex that maked someone a boy or girl, not clothes, hair or behaviour.

So nothing to do with trans ideology.

*understanding of self

I meant people like you, Tandora...

In this context, gender is being used as a straightforward synonym for sex. Children go through stages of recognizing their sex, and then that it cannot change. See for example this explanation, the paragraph headed "What do children understand about the existence of two sexes and when?"

https://fairplayforwomen.com/stereotypes/

Gender has been used interchangeably with sex historically. It's really hard to know what people actually mean when they say 'gender'.
Generally it's society's expectations on you as a person based on your perceived sex.

Anyway, we have yet to determine whether sex has anything to do with gender identity.

@Tandora says it is to do with sex, but also seems to say that sex is not relevant when determining gender, because either sex can be any gender.

The definition of 'trans' is that you have a GI that doesn't match your sex. There is no list provided of which genders match which sexes. If they said 'woman matches female' then I would like to know how and why they have established that, because they also say women aren't all females/females aren't all women.

It is true that young children get to a stage where boys understand they are boys and girls understand they are boys. Most children go through a phase of preferring the company of their own sex. I suspect this exists as men and women have had traditionally had different roles in society and to learn your role you needed to know which adults you needed to model.

This is very different from the modern concept of gender identity which says your identity actually makes you male or female. And not only that, but gender identity usurps sex.

Little boys who prefer playing with girls, remain little boys. Little girls who prefer playing with boys remain girls.

What do genderists believe is a difference between a man and a woman?

This is the question that is never answered.

OK, once we did have someone who ID'd on here as a TW who answered, and basically claimed that there were 'women' and 'men' core personalities, that matched nearly exactly with having a female or male body except in the case of trans people. They were male but had a woman personality - less rational, more emotional, I think were two examples.

I don't believe there is any evidence to back up that assertion.

It means a settled understanding of self as a boy or girl; and that this does not change with hairstyle/
Clothes etc.
yes this literature tends to presuppose that this settled understanding of self will align with physical sex (it doesn’t contemplate transness) but that doesn’t change the fact that this literature recognises that all children undergo a psychological / cognitive process of self-recognition as male or female. This process isn’t settled at birth, it develops over time. This is all that I mean by “gender identity”. for most people this development of gender identity (/constancy) will align with sex as identified at birth (as presumed in this literature).
For a small minority it will not. we
dont yet know what causes this,
although some interesting research has suggested a role for both genetics and hormones.

I remember that highly insulting poster. I think he did come to accept at least a little that his version of what it felt like to be a woman matched no single woman on the thread.

Ok now I really do have to go x

All you are saying here is that children get to a stage where they understand they are male or female. No one would argue with that.

This is absolutely not gender identity.

You seem to be trying to piggy back gender ideology ( or whatever you want to call it) onto the established fact that humans develop to know they are boys or girls.

Gender constancy, as you call it, does not support gender ideology. You would still need to evidence and define this belief system.

But isn’t that the situation as it is now?

The reality is that TW are using women’s toilets, changing spaces and being accepted into refuges. So the data we have now on how significant the threat is is the dangerous data right?

A male rapist/ sex offender isn’t going to be deterred by a sign on a toilet door. There are no police outside ensuring that everyone goes into their prescribed spaces so I just feel like there is SO much discourse about this.

I wonder how many male police officers have abused women in prisons compared to TW?

I wonder how many straight men have raped women in nightclub toilets compared to TW?

I definitely find a lot of the arguments on here logical about defining definitions - I just don’t think this should be the most dominant discourse in modern feminism.

But I respect a woman’s right to believe it is to her and fight for that if she chooses to.

What do genderists believe is a difference between a man and a woman?

This is the question that is never answered.

And remains so
And so it will remain forever more