To not understand how this means a man can get a female passport?

[Brla]

A close friend of DH recently came out as trans. He’s had surgery abroad (FFS I think it’s called) and has set up an Instagram account with videos of the process and many, many, many outfits and make up videos. He has two sons and was married for 14 years before this.

I don’t really have an opinion as such on being trans. I think it’s likely that it’s a genuine feeling that I just can’t understand as I haven’t experienced it and don’t think it’s necessarily just a mental illness.

I don’t understand though that this person has not had his genitals removed or changed (not sure how you would express it) and yet has still got a new passport now saying F. Am I being thick for being unable to get my head around this? He still has a penis so surely that means he is male? How can he have had a passport issued as female?! Do you literally just need to apply and say you’re now presenting as female?

Yes it is the case.
I’m assuming that this won’t be changing anytime soon so my DD won’t be able to go on residential school trips etc unless I go with her. Not ideal because that’s the last thing I want to do, but these organisations can’t safeguard anymore.

If it's necessary then sure.

Posters often like to start a thread about transgender people to start a bun fight because it guarantees a full 1000 post thread of arguing and for some reason a group of about 8 posters love arguing about this topic, it's like a sport to them.

When it's too obvious that this is what the thread is doing it gets deleted for transphobia. So people like to start threads which are more subtle claiming they don't know what they are doing because it lets the thread fly under the radar so it doesn't get deleted but they know the result will be the same.

We have a few of these every week, like the non binary teacher pronoun thread etc. There is no way that the OP was completely unaware that asking an innocent question about a transgender friends passport would go the way it has, like all the other threads do unless they have NEVER been on MN before. These threads are common and they are easy to spot.

I do believe you know that, like everyone else does and you are being facetious.

Purely out of curiosity, how many gender identities do you recognise @Lostcat ? Of the 70+ gender identities that people currently claim to be, are there any you don't believe are legitimate?

It wasn't meant to signify your gender, which has no agreed definition and no means of verification. It was meant to note your sex, which in terms of international travel matters if you needed to be searched, for example. Your gender won't be being searched, your body will.

A female airport security person shouldn't have to search a male bodied passenger whose passport denotes a female gender, and a female passenger shouldn't have to be searched by a male bodied professional with a 'female' identity. Just one example of why 'what difference does it make to you?' doesn't work in real life.

Have you ever been asked to show the F marker on your passport before being body searched at the airport? :/

There have been a few posts like this that seem to be attempting to implore people to seek to find a description that ‘works’ in making something impossible, not only plausible, but possible. As if finding the right combination of words miraculously make a person’s posts even remotely credible.

It may be because ‘we haven’t yet discovered ‘x’ ‘ where x = the potential biological aspects underlying someone being ‘trans’ (which is an umbrella term for a group of identities that includes 130+ genders including being gender fluid and changing gender at anytime - some people change gender hourly or more often) or the very edges of the variations of human medical conditions that allow posters to state ‘sex is complicated and/or binary’.

Or finding the words that don’t throw a massive beacon on the logical flaws and fallacies that are foundational to the transgender identities and the theories they are supported by.

However, there is no combination of words, descriptions or supposed nuances that accurately and coherently define or describe a ‘gender identity’. Except that it is a philosophical belief a person has about themselves that has a high likelihood of not reflecting material reality.

And there are several questions that have not been explained at all, or even attempted to be answered.

What other philosophical belief is prioritised in law that is higher in the hierarchy than the sex category of a human body in matters where sex does matter?

Does any other philosophical belief get the additional privileges (often mistakenly described as ‘rights’) that this belief gets?

And if the answer to that last question is no, why does this belief get these additional privileges ?

Trans people are people who understand/ know/ recognise/ experience their sex as different to their sex as it was observed at birth.

If this is the definition of being trans, it clearly makes no sense. You can't experience your sex as being different to what it is. You cannot experience being the opposite sex, you can only imagine it. It like saying you understand/know/recognise/experience yourself as blue eyed, when you have brown eyes. Having blue eyes isn't an experience, it's just a biological fact.

I think their definition is spot on though. In that for trans people their internal understanding of their gender identity is different to their sex observed / assigned at birth (whichever you prefer.)

How can a gender identity match with or be different to a sex? Which genders go with which sex? That's just stereotypes about what men or women should be like, what kind of personalities men or women should have . Any body goes with any personality or set of interests.

Again, being trans is not a "philosophical belief".

Then you are really very misinformed.

How do you think the airport staff decide who should pat down who? Do you think it's random?

You can't experience your sex as being different to what it is

But you can. This is literally what it is to be trans. I appreciate it's very hard to imagine this experience when you don't possess it, but all you really have to be able to grasp is that not everyone's experience is the same.

How can a gender identity match with or be different to a sex?

"match with" in the sense of: "I understand myself to be a woman/ girl/ female", "I was observed to be female and registered female at birth".

Are the genders attached in my screen shots based in fact or belief?

It's certainly not by looking at the F marker or their passport? 😂Or are you trying now to pretend that's how it works?

But you can. This is literally what it is to be trans

You can't. You are born, live your life, and die, as the sex you were at conception. Nothing else is materially possible, it's all just imagination.

Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) set out five criteria when it comes to philosophical belief:

• the belief has to be one which is genuinely held
• it has to be a belief, and not simply an opinion or viewpoint that’s based on the present state of information available
• it has to relate to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour
• the belief has to attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance
• it has to be worthy of respect within a democratic society, and not be incompatible with human dignity or conflict with the fundamental rights of others.

Are you saying that it isn't genuinely held, not believed, not weightly or substantial, not cogent, serious, cohesive or important and not WORIADS? Just one or all of them?

Well it is though. It is a belief a person has about themself which isn't objectively true. A man who believes they are 'really' a woman is having a belief, because they aren't a woman, by definition.

'Woman' isn't an experience, it isn't a feeling, it isn't a set of stereotypes about liking pink, it's just a biological category. You cannot feel like a woman, you can only be one, and the only way to be one is to be born a girl and grow to adulthood. Trans is just stereotypes. Like pink, wear a dress, fancy men, it makes no odds to me and it doesn't make you a woman.

Well you're doing a terrible job.

Of course it's a pretense, in execution . It's a man pretending to be a woman, what else could you possibly call it?

I only know how it feels to live my life as me. That just so happens to be as a female person. I can't live my life as anything else. Because I am female.

My experience of being female is vastly different to that of many other female people. That doesn't mean one/some of us aren't experience life as females.

My male children (both pretty gnc as it happens) can only experience life as male people, despite their long hair/wearing clothes from the women's section/ liking traditionally "female" things. Because they are male.

Of course it's a pretense, in execution . It's a man pretending to be a woman, what else could you possibly call it?

Ah, but if you think you are something then you are that thing, apparently.

(Apart from transracial, trans age-suddenly just thinking you're that thing isn't enough.)

You can't! Your sex is a fact, it's not an experience! That's like saying you can experience your height as being different to what it is. You can't, I'm 5'3, I can't experience myself as really 6'4, because it's a fact it's not an experience.

And again, you cannot understand yourself to be the sex you're not. I cannot understand myself to be a woman, I either am one or not. You can only imagine what it might be to be the opposite sex, you can't experience what that's like. It's not an understanding.

How do you think the airport staff decide who should search who?

Would you say that sexuality is a "belief"? I'm guessing not. Why?

Apply the same reasoning to transness.

Gender identity is a fundamental psychological(/likely also biological) characteristic of a person, not an "idea" that a person consciously holds about themself.

Are you seriously pretending that they look at for the f or m marker on their passport?

I've been body searched at the airport, I've never been asked to show my passport first.

Have you?

Let's be honest now...

I cannot understand myself to be a woman

So let me ask you this question: "Are you a woman?"

Are you able to answer it?

Hi @Lostcat , could you maybe answer my question about facilities, sports, pat downs, that are segregated by a characteristic and if sex segregation in your view should be allowed or not?

And if sex segregation is allowed legally, do you think allowing falsification of a passport and other papers to register someone's gender identity instead of sex is a good thing for a. the transperson and b. Women want to be able to segregate based on sex?

In case anyone wonders about the sex marker on documentation, when someone's sex is contested, a quick look can resolve the issue of what someone's sex is. If the documentation is not correct, then you get into hot water, because is then a male person allowed to pat down a female person when the female person objects? What should the female person do? Allow it even though she doesn't want to? Not board the flight, go to the concert, enter the club?