HamBagelNoCheese · Today 03:03
So a transwoman, who has had gender reassignment surgery, has no testes or penis, hasn't gone to "extreme lengths"?
Most ‘transwomen’ still appear male to the casual observer and contrary to the claims of some TRAs, nobody is conducting genital inspections, so a person who appears male should go in with the other males. I’m really not sure why how he sees himself is relevant to the conversation. Is there or isn’t there such a thing as objective reality? He sees himself one way and everyone else sees the objective reality, but we must all defer to the incorrect perception? In what other situation would this happen?
If he actually appears female to the casual observer, then while I think he should still use the male toilets, the truth is that as long as he isn’t known to be male and isn’t getting up to no good in the toilets, no-one will be alarmed by his presence in female toilets.
What about from a legal perspective? Both people in my example have all legal documents (passport, birth certificate etc.) in the gender of which they identify.
The legislation and policy decisions that allowed people to obtain documents that state falsehoods came about due to a desire to be kind to a very small number of people who were described as suffering terrible anguish over the mismatch between their actual sex and their self-perception of their sex. It was an admirable desire but it was a mistake that is causing a lot of problems to women.
The impact on women was poorly considered and the only safeguard, that people would be scrutinised by two psychiatrists before being allowed to get a gender recognition certificate, is about to be removed by the new Labour government. This safeguard was meant to ensure that only a very small number of people got legal recognition. It’s all in the records of the parliamentary debates held at the time.
Over the years, transsexual became an old-fashioned term. The new term, transgender incorporates the much larger numbers of transvestites, who were known to be sexually motivated and really not suitable to be lumped in with women. Unfortunately for women, there has been a lot of quiet campaigning by TRAs with those in government and policymakers elsewhere to get these rights. The impact on women wasn’t considered and by the time a lot of women’s rights organisations realised what was happening, rights had been granted that shouldn’t have been, at least not without open discussion with women.
Your incorrect use of pronouns is also offensive. You don't get to decide how someone identifies themselves. Basic respect doesn't cost anything.
Reality is offensive, I guess. I don’t get to decide how someone identifies themself. I don’t and have never tried to do so. But you can’t expect me to lie or pretend to believe something I don’t believe because someone else is mistaken or deluded or engaging in some deep role play.
Do you believe in objective reality or not? Changing sex is impossible. The best people can hope for is to make others believe that they are a different sex with cosmetic treatments. I use ‘he’ and ‘she’ to refer to the objective reality of their sex. How they identify is not my business.
If they were present I would avoid using any pronouns at all, for the sake of politeness, but in their absence I’m not going to engage in all that language deceit. We need clear language so people reading can understand the issues. TRAs use ambiguity to confuse people and gain declarations of support from people who don’t know whether male or female people are being referenced due to the deliberately obfuscatory language.