I do not believe in gender identity.

[SernieBanders]

There are two sexes: male and female. Occasionally, that matters.

There is no such thing as an innate gender identity—no internal essence that makes someone more inclined to wear dresses and sip wine, or football boots and down pints. Those are cultural stereotypes, not proof of some mystical gendered soul.

The idea of gender identity is sexist, misogynistic, and regressive. It reinforces outdated norms instead of challenging them. Women do not need an inner feeling of womanhood to be women. Men do not need a gender identity to be men. Sex is real. Stereotypes are not.

I hope with the flurry of cultural changes, legal challenges, scientific findings and executive orders in the last ~12 months, more people feel able to stand up and be counted, and say - No More.

Just sticking up for myself after being told lies about and called names . That’s all. Not harping on about it being boring anymore at all. Now please stop focusing on me and quoting me .

a reminder @Cornflakes123 that you aren't the thread police on this or any other thread.

Thanks for posting this thread from 2021. It has some excellent posts. I’ve only read a couple so far but wanted to share this from a poster called Nauticant.

A poster above said that these kinds of threads are useful in that they help us to articulate our own thoughts. I couldn’t agree more.

Please keep posts such as these trending because the more people we get talking about this subject the better for everyone, especially trans identifying young people.

nauticant · 16/03/2021 16:51

I think Ray Blanchard said that gender identity really only makes sense when used in the context of someone who has gender dysphoria
I like this, someone who has gender dysphoria can be said to have a gender identity. But this doesn't mean people without gender dysphoria have a gender identity. It follows that in treating someone for gender dysphoria treatments on the basis of investigating their gender identity with a view to validating it are not necessarily going to be effective.

Re prisons:

There should be a specific closed wing in a men's prison where all men who claim to be women can be housed.

Safe from other male prisoners who might be a threat to them.

And posing no threat to women who are locked up with no chance of escaping them.

I wonder how many would make that claim, if there was zero chance they would get transferred to women's prisons.

@RobinEllacotStrike I didn’t say I was. Focus on me if u want feel free . I will continue to stick up for myself when people continue to say I wasn’t bullied. And I don’t care if that derails the thread. I’m not going to put up with that

I believe that for some autistic young men, identifying as a woman is a gentler experience for them and they feel like they are treated better. It is heartbreaking.

Not reading any more of these whiny posts

Excellent idea.

Which in itself is evidence of male privilege. Women have always had worse treatment, and have had to fight for every right that’s ever been conceded to them. No actual women think for a moment that to be a woman is to get better treatment or a ‘gentler experience’.

I agree, but spare a thought for what life must be like if you are a young autistic male who has been bullied all your life because you don’t fit in. And people, particularly children, are cruel. So in your trauma you read about this thing called trans and being born in the wrong body and it starts to make sense to you because you don’t feel right in your own body. So you grow your hair long you change your name you change your pronouns and you’re told that taking hormones will make you feel better. Your end game is to have surgery and maybe even facial reconstruction and then maybe people won’t despise you so much.

These poor kids don’t have much male privilege…

Yes. This is very true.

And the reality is, that these male people can only identify with how they conceptualise being female. So, in other words, they have formed a version of 'womanhood' or 'girlhood' as they personally perceive it and that is who they identify with. And it can never be the actual lived experience of a female person because everything they experience is as a male person. That is how they process it.

It is completely back to front logic and was always false. Yet, here we are.

I think this thread has been really useful - it highlights the fact that this week the OP could openly state a position on gender ideology that only a few years ago people lost jobs for or got reported by their DC’s school and subsequently investigated by Social Services for (myself for example).

It a seismic shift that this statement is legally protected and thus permitted anywhere on this - or any other - discussion platform, as well as in the AIBU forum. Add to that the fact that the support for the statement is reflected in YouGov polls and an indicator of a shifting perspective amongst the population as a whole.

I find it hard, especially post publication of the Cass Report, that there is really any support for the alternate viewpoint, above single digit percentages frankly.

But I take enormous solace in the fact that I am on the way to the passport office to formally change my DD’s name to the gender neutral one I foolishly allowed her to adopt when she was 14, and that she has written to everyone else this week - the NHS, DVLA, her bank, GP, Dentist etc - to instruct that the name she chose (and, yes, one which I truly hate 🥺) is used at all times AND that she wants it noted that her pronouns are SHE/HER and all correspondence to or about her should use these now.

A huge day here. I could fucking crack open the champagne.
Enormous hug to those here who haven’t quite got there yet, but please do not lose the faith. 🫂

@CautiousLurker01 i have just shed a tear of joy for you and your DD. I would absolutely crack open the champagne.
Thank you for sharing and giving me, and other cautious lurkers, hope 🥂

I think Cautious you have hit the nail on the head.

This thread, for all the negative categorisation of reactions (hysterical ?? boring), it was only a few years ago that it would not have been allowed to remain in AIBU. It would have been either deleted or shuffled off to the feminist board.

And so many of the posts would be been deleted for stating the biological truth about who is a woman and who is not. I remember those days and I remember the massive shift felt with the Forstater case, and just by a judge declaring that not believing that male people were in any way female was to be respected by society, certainly in the law courts.

That day so a change on this site and every court case won by a woman who has said 'men cannot be women' in the UK since then has created the change that we see today.

This past week, Trump, has listened to his electorate and has put through Executive Orders that has again shifted the boundaries of the discussion. In reality, those three EOs have merely put the US in line with the UK and other countries in the protection of female rights. Because they have not successfully fully protected the needs of female people for single sex provisions, including sports.

But those EOs have burst open the floodgates for discussion. And they have allowed frank and open discussion to happen. Hence we are seeing the backlash with 'its boring' or 'supporting these EOs means you support an abhorrent man'.

There is nothing hyperbolic generally in the discussions from a feminist perspective. However, there is a whole lot of hyperbole and misinformation that get rolled out by those who wish to censure anyone for supporting prioritising sex based rights over gender identity.

I agree, but spare a thought for what life must be like if you are a young autistic male who has been bullied all your life because you don’t fit in. And people, particularly children, are cruel. So in your trauma you read about this thing called trans and being born in the wrong body and it starts to make sense to you because you don’t feel right in your own body. So you grow your hair long you change your name you change your pronouns and you’re told that taking hormones will make you feel better. Your end game is to have surgery and maybe even facial reconstruction and then maybe people won’t despise you so much.

Whilst that is important and possible, it really doesn't justify overturning the entire basis of society and forcing everyone else to behave in ways that run contrary to their views of themselves. The reason we have a saying about the tail wagging the dog, is because it's never a good idea to try and force a massive majority of people into an extremely limited worldview based on a tiny majority.

The fact we find ourselves being pressured into doing so does highlight that the "tiny minority" must clearly be drawn from a class of people with great privilege.

Following on from this polling data, recently a USA polling company did a survey sponsored by the New York Times (ie. the NYT did not conduct the survey but sponsored it).

Here is a poll done by a media outlet in the USA about women’s sports. The link to Leor Sapir’s post is

https://x.com/leorsapir/status/1887251272128139299?s=46

Tweet says :

“President Trump has signed an executive order limiting female sports to women and girls.

Some in the media will write that he "banned transgender people from sports."

He did no such thing. Disingenuous claims like these no longer resonate with the American people.

The latest NYT poll finds that the policy reflected in Trump's executive order is supported by

* 67% of Democrat or Democrat-leaning
* 94% of Republican or Republican-leaning
* 64% of Independents
* 79% of all Americans

It's hard to find any other issue in contemporary politics that has that such wide bipartisan support.

Trump may have just signed one of the most popular executive orders of the 21st century.”

The poll data is

https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/a66cc1cd29a9ea2c/41386e22-full.pdf

and page 18 is the relevant one to sport. However, there are other questions there that may be of interest.

Trump may have just signed one of the most popular executive orders of the 21st century.”

It remains to be seen whether that was akin to burning your house down to avoid redecorating.

Considering he won based on a wide range of issues, why would him signing an executive order to protect female sports backfire?

I remember, in the beginning of the gender bollocks, all the wise women calling for "debate" about sex & gender.

Initally I was confused - why should be have to debate the existence and importance of biological sex? Why do we have to "debate" facts?

But of course those wise women were right & the "other side" knew they were right. They all rushed in and ushed in the years of "No Debate" where we were shut down, and deleted for using honest factual language on Twitter, FB, Reddit - basically everywhere online including MN.

I was stood down & deleted from MN for using "trans identified man" and similar. I was put in Twitter jail many times for using the "man" word.

But debate we did and debate we do.

I would say the age of No Debate is well & truly over, but actually the TRA's won't debate. But we are now free to speak the truth & others are free to read about what is really going on and how this impacts us all.

The truth matters, the truth we will speak.

For years when we wanted to talk about the gender bollocks we were forced to use the language of the gender bollocks pushers - not our own words or language. The colonisers forced us to use their language or get deleted/cancelled/kicked off.

It worked for quite some time but not anymore.

Language is so central to this issue - we've got out language back now and we won't stop speaking about this subject.

Oh yes. I have been warned numerous times by MN for being blunt.

And by blunt I mean stating that no male person can be a woman or a girl.

Sex Is Binary And Unchangeable

Gender is pretty much just personality....

Oh and, "trans women" are men.

Gender questioning people have been lied to - by schools, doctors, authorities and the wider public. Of course they will feel bad! It's a horrendously traumatic experience to go through.

It's our responsibility as a society to stop giving false promises to children and vulnerable people, to be honest with them and with each other about the damage that's already done, and to help everyone to move forward.

Can you truly say that a TP reading this thread wouldn’t feel like shit?

There is only so much #bekind you can spread around before it becomes too thin. And that is drying up.

That's not a justification for being deliberately cruel, unkind or any other words people want to interpose in a situation where you can't turn the ship around for the lone lost passenger. However life is very much like an airline journey. No matter how much that single person really wants to go to Cuba. If all the other passengers want to go to Heathrow, then where will it go ? It seems a lot of people seem to think that being the case, everyone at Heathrow should dress up in native costumes, be singing "Viva Cuba !" whilst swigging rum and chomping on cigars in order to sooth that single soul.

It wasn’t the adolescent kids who turned over the entire basis of society. I really don’t think any of this can be blamed on them. Those who need to be held accountable are adults in positions of power who have stood by and said nothing whilst great harm was done to children. I agree that women need to be protected and their spaces respected but first and foremost children need to be protected.

YABU. Assert two genders IS affirming gender identity. Maybe you wanted to say you don't agree with non binary as a gender. Who cares. This debate has an over sized "importance" in political discourse and provides a useful distraction from the theft by billionaires that's going on.