Page 14 | Sending love to trans people on MN and beyond

cassandre · 2025-04-17T19:58:30+00:00

This isn't an AIBU. I just wanted to send love to trans people, in the UK especially, and to other members of the LGBTQIA+ community. This hasn't been the easiest week for trans people, but there are a lot of us out there who accept you for who you are. We have your backs and we believe that eventually, tolerance and compassion will win.💖💖💖 Love from a longtime MNer and trans-inclusive feminist.

Nameychangington · 18/04/2025 18:03

Lostcat · 18/04/2025 17:59

Sorry your thread has been taken over by the usual OP xxx

Thank you for the OP nonetheless. you speak for so many of us. although we are always drowned out by the same handful of inexhaustible voices we are still here.

❤️

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On all polling it's not a handful, it's the majority of the UK who agree that transwomen aren't women and shouldn't be in women's single sex spaces. And now the supreme court has clarified that that is the law, as well as the will of the majority of people.

poetryandwine · 18/04/2025 18:03

Helleofabore · 18/04/2025 17:50

There is a difference in published and peer reviewed strength and implied on this thread strength of the conclusion happening here.

Sure. A study can be peer reviewed. Doesn’t mean that the conclusions have not been misrepresented on MN.

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The conclusions of these papers are shades of grey. They are real. They are important They are not dispositive. The studies are relatively new. They will or won’t be amplified over time.

Few things in the medical field are black and white. That is how Robert Kennedy and his ilk are able to sow doubt around vaccines - both their efficacy and whether they cause autism. A lawyer for the Vaccines Cause Autism Brigade gets an expert witness on the stand. The witness can only give it as their learned opinion that vaccines do not cause autism. They cite papers showing that ‘our study may refute the hypothesis that vaccines cause autism’ or similar language. The lawyer booms, ‘But can you PROVE to us that vaccines never cause autism?’ And of course the witness cannot, because the standard in medicine is not mathematically rigorous proof.

I have said that the papers show that transgendered brains show significant differences. It isn’t the level of certainty on which to base a legal case. But it is real.

TheKeatingFive · 18/04/2025 18:03

AlizeeEasy · 18/04/2025 18:01

I said that I think they are women. I’m not subject to court rulings, I’m talking about my ideal world. I want gender included, so that’s how I would handle it

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How are you going to define gender if you want it included? What makes a transwoman a woman?

5128gap · 18/04/2025 18:04

Penguinmouse · 17/04/2025 21:13

Yes, this has happened more than once. I mean, you can think I’m exaggerating but I’m not. But gee I’m so glad a court has summed women up as walking vaginas. Definitely worth it.

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I didn't. It said that only female bodied people are women, not that the only thing woman are is female bodied.

AlizeeEasy · 18/04/2025 18:05

TheKeatingFive · 18/04/2025 18:03

So you don't believe women should have any sex based rights, correct?

That any man who wants should have access to their prison cells and their rape crisis counselling?

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Correction. I think women should have access to those spaces alone. But transwomen are women

TheKeatingFive · 18/04/2025 18:06

AlizeeEasy · 18/04/2025 18:05

Correction. I think women should have access to those spaces alone. But transwomen are women

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So if you think TWAW, why are you them excluding them from those women's spaces?

Nameychangington · 18/04/2025 18:06

AlizeeEasy · 18/04/2025 18:05

Correction. I think women should have access to those spaces alone. But transwomen are women

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How can you simultaneously think women should have single sex spaces, and think transwomen are women? If they're women, why can't they come in the women's space?

Helleofabore · 18/04/2025 18:06

AlizeeEasy · 18/04/2025 17:53

What do you think should happen with trans men? They always seem left out of the argument, have you seen pictures of what some trans men look like? Some are big burly bearded blokes. If you force trans women out of female spaces then you force trans men into them

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They are not left out of the argument. I believe that many of them don’t want to be used as weapons of intimidation towards convincing female people that they need to allow in male people with transgender identities as you have just done.

Imagine though, if female people who may be distressed at the male body cues given to female people on testosterone understood that the person was still female, there might be much less need for those female people to be concerned about the distress of others. They could still make those alternative plans, but not because of the reaction of other female people.

“If you force trans women out of female spaces then you force trans men into them”

No. Many female people with transgender identities find alternative solutions for their needs. It takes a lot of work, but they do it.

By the way, that is a solution available to male transgender people as well you know. They can find alternative solutions too.

MereNoelle · 18/04/2025 18:10

AlizeeEasy · 18/04/2025 18:05

Correction. I think women should have access to those spaces alone. But transwomen are women

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Except they’re not.

Helleofabore · 18/04/2025 18:10

poetryandwine · 18/04/2025 18:03

The conclusions of these papers are shades of grey. They are real. They are important They are not dispositive. The studies are relatively new. They will or won’t be amplified over time.

Few things in the medical field are black and white. That is how Robert Kennedy and his ilk are able to sow doubt around vaccines - both their efficacy and whether they cause autism. A lawyer for the Vaccines Cause Autism Brigade gets an expert witness on the stand. The witness can only give it as their learned opinion that vaccines do not cause autism. They cite papers showing that ‘our study may refute the hypothesis that vaccines cause autism’ or similar language. The lawyer booms, ‘But can you PROVE to us that vaccines never cause autism?’ And of course the witness cannot, because the standard in medicine is not mathematically rigorous proof.

I have said that the papers show that transgendered brains show significant differences. It isn’t the level of certainty on which to base a legal case. But it is real.

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But they don’t show significant differences within the male category, or do they? Please point it out. I did ask you to do that as you are an academic.

Instead you have stated ‘it is all grey’. So, I take it you know that they are not strong but thought that you would use them anyway.

Any chance of a link to the first study please? Or are you just going by the abstract.

poetryandwine · 18/04/2025 18:18

JandamiHash · 18/04/2025 17:37

No she was correct, all transwomen are men. What aren’t you understanding?

”Dripping with venom” is another misogynistic “why won’t these fucking women just STFU” set of words to tick off our misogyny bingo list.

Youre outraged because a man’s feelings have been hurt - what about the feelings of women for over a decade who’ve been gaslighted into accepting men into their safe spaces? How do you feel about their upset?

Transwomen need to start accepting people will call them men because they are. I expect a legal professional to have a better backbone

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A person’s feelings were gratuitously hurt on national television because the victor couldn’t resist rubbing salt in the wound.

I would have been equally enraged on anyone’s behalf and no matter the issue. I have spent decades standing for and with women in the scientific workforce and other arenas and in many cases metaphorically drying their tears.

In my view the question of trans men in women’s spaces is nuanced. Sometimes it is inappropriate and sometimes to judge by this thread women can be as prejudiced as the men we criticise for not hearing us.

Helleofabore · 18/04/2025 18:19

poetryandwine · 18/04/2025 18:03

The conclusions of these papers are shades of grey. They are real. They are important They are not dispositive. The studies are relatively new. They will or won’t be amplified over time.

Few things in the medical field are black and white. That is how Robert Kennedy and his ilk are able to sow doubt around vaccines - both their efficacy and whether they cause autism. A lawyer for the Vaccines Cause Autism Brigade gets an expert witness on the stand. The witness can only give it as their learned opinion that vaccines do not cause autism. They cite papers showing that ‘our study may refute the hypothesis that vaccines cause autism’ or similar language. The lawyer booms, ‘But can you PROVE to us that vaccines never cause autism?’ And of course the witness cannot, because the standard in medicine is not mathematically rigorous proof.

I have said that the papers show that transgendered brains show significant differences. It isn’t the level of certainty on which to base a legal case. But it is real.

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You also said :

“Being truly transgender is a measurable biological phenomenon”

And you posted those two studies. That simply don’t even stack up to logical conclusions.

Plus the main author of the first one has not been able to get any closer despite further studies.

Helleofabore · 18/04/2025 18:20

poetryandwine · 18/04/2025 18:18

A person’s feelings were gratuitously hurt on national television because the victor couldn’t resist rubbing salt in the wound.

I would have been equally enraged on anyone’s behalf and no matter the issue. I have spent decades standing for and with women in the scientific workforce and other arenas and in many cases metaphorically drying their tears.

In my view the question of trans men in women’s spaces is nuanced. Sometimes it is inappropriate and sometimes to judge by this thread women can be as prejudiced as the men we criticise for not hearing us.

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The person who announced on national TV that they did not tell their sex partner that they were male? Which if that sex partner now wanted to could report that barrister to the police for sex by deception?

Yet you are defending their feelings of being referred to as a man?

TwistedWonder · 18/04/2025 18:21

AlizeeEasy · 18/04/2025 18:05

Correction. I think women should have access to those spaces alone. But transwomen are women

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Not according to the law they’re not

Biological women need and want SEX spaces that don’t include biological men

BiologicalRobot · 18/04/2025 18:23

AlizeeEasy · 18/04/2025 18:05

Correction. I think women should have access to those spaces alone. But transwomen are women

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No one ever claimed they can, sex and gender are different. You can change gender but not sex
^^ your words. If they can't change sex how are they women?

As for gender based rights, at the last count there were over 72 genders. Here is a link to just some of them.
https://www.disabled-world.com/disability/sexuality/lgbt/genders.php

Edit - the SNP acknowledged 24 of them. Just search any Scottish newspaper.

poetryandwine · 18/04/2025 18:28

JandamiHash · 18/04/2025 16:49

This study has absolutely no bearing on who is a man or a woman. The brains of trans people are not different to the sex they’re part of and this study doesn’t prove otherwise

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Yes, the brains of those who have been transgender since a young age are more likely to be atypical of their biological sex

MzHz · 18/04/2025 18:32

Oh ffs, trans people have lost nothing! The reasoning was very explicit in stating that anything ELSE would create subgroups that would have more entitlement than the main groups themselves

trans people already have the protection in law that they need

this is merely establishing that sex is biological and immutable and this protects them, and both men and women from categorising trans people in groups that they do not biologically belong.

medical locations, changing rooms, sports, prisons etc now have clear guidance and definition to keep all patients/clients/players/inmates safe and secure.

this hoo ha that trans people are harassed is way over blown and already has many laws, regulations and bodies designed to tackling this.

its not a personal judgment, its legal clarification that means NOTHING to trans people.

I do so wish the trans people would stop trying to make everything about them, sometimes is absolutely not about them. Drop the drama.

BundleBoogie · 18/04/2025 18:34

poetryandwine · 18/04/2025 18:18

A person’s feelings were gratuitously hurt on national television because the victor couldn’t resist rubbing salt in the wound.

I would have been equally enraged on anyone’s behalf and no matter the issue. I have spent decades standing for and with women in the scientific workforce and other arenas and in many cases metaphorically drying their tears.

In my view the question of trans men in women’s spaces is nuanced. Sometimes it is inappropriate and sometimes to judge by this thread women can be as prejudiced as the men we criticise for not hearing us.

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Stating a verifiable objective fact about someone is not ‘prejudice’. HTH.

Being prevented from speaking plainly about these men is what got us where we are today which is having to take the SG to court to prove that the law still says that men are not women. Stop trying to shut us down.

MzHz · 18/04/2025 18:35

AlizeeEasy · 18/04/2025 18:05

Correction. I think women should have access to those spaces alone. But transwomen are women

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Biologically they are not, nor will they ever be

this doesn’t stop them living the way they wish, but they can’t gaslight their way to a single sex space for women they don’t and never will belong to.

you can’t change your DNA. You can’t change sex.

poetryandwine · 18/04/2025 18:46

Helleofabore · 18/04/2025 16:42

'More likely' is having to carry a great deal here.

I don't believe that a strong conclusion has been drawn by Bakker. I think that she has said there may be, but it all requires a lot more research. Without us seeing the results, we also don't know if the grouping were well within the known ranges for each sex.

I think you are trying to convince readers of conclusions that you have strengthened without supporting evidence.

https://www.ese-hormones.org/media/ei0psrhz/transgender-brains-are-more-like-their-desired-gender-from-an-early-age.pdf

Abstract Symposium S30.3

Brain structure and function in gender dysphoria

The concept of gender identity is uniquely human. Hence we are left with the phenomenon of men and women suffering from Gender Dysphoria (GD) also known as transsexualism to study the origins of gender identity in humans. It has been hypothesized that atypical levels of sex steroids during a perinatal critical period of neuronal sexual differentiation may be involved in the development of GD. In order to test this hypothesis, we investigated brain structure and function in individuals diagnosed with GD using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Since GD is often diagnosed in childhood and puberty has been proposed to be an additional organizational period in brain differentiation, we included both prepubertal children and adolescents with GD in our studies. First, we measured brain activation upon exposure to androstadienone, a putative male chemo-signal which evokes sex differences in hypothalamic activation (women > men). We found that hypothalamic responses of both adolescent girls and boys diagnosed with GD were more similar to their experienced gender than their birth sex, which supports the hypothesis of a sex-atypical brain differentiation in these individuals. At the structural level, we analyzed both regional gray matter (GM) volumes and white matter (WM) microstructure using diffusion tensor imaging. In cisgender girls, larger GM volumes were observed in the bilateral superior medial frontal and left pre/postcentral cortex, while cis-gender boys had more volume in the bilateral superior-posterior cerebellum and hypothalamus. Within these regions of interest representing sexually dimorphic brain structures, GM volumes of both GD groups deviated from the volumetric characteristics of their birth sex towards those of individuals sharing their gender identity. Furthermore, we found intermediate patterns in WM microstructure in adolescent boys with GD, but only sex-typical ones in adolescent girls with GD. These results on brain structure are thus partially in line with a sex-atypical differentiation of the brain during early development in individuals with GD, but might also suggest that other mechanisms are involved. Indeed, using resting state MRI, we observed GD-specific functional connectivity in the visual network in adolescent girls with GD. The latter is in support of a more recent hypothesis on alterations in brain networks important for own body perception and self-referential processing in individuals with GD.

Abstract below from a follow up that Bakker did in 2023

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39029340/

Abstract

This review has been based on my invited lecture at the annual meeting of the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology in 2023. Gender incongruence is defined as a marked and persistent incongruence between an individual's experienced gender and the sex assigned at birth. A prominent hypothesis on the etiology of gender incongruence proposes that it is related to an altered or less pronounced sexual differentiation of the brain. This hypothesis has primarily been based on postmortem studies of the hypothalamus in transgender individuals. To further address this hypothesis, a series of structural and functional neuroimaging studies were conducted in the Amsterdam cohort of children and adolescents experiencing gender incongruence. Additional research objectives were to determine whether any sex and gender differences are established before or after puberty, as well as whether gender affirming hormone treatment would affect brain development and function. We found some evidence in favor of the sexual differentiation hypothesis at the functional level, but this was less evident at the structural level. We also observed some specific transgender neural signatures, suggesting that they might present a unique brain phenotype rather than being shifted towards either end of the male-female spectrum. Our results further suggest that the years between childhood and mid-adolescence represent an important period in which puberty-related factors influence several neural characteristics, such as white matter development and functional connectivity patterns, in both a sex and gender identity specific way. These latter observations thus lead to the important question about the possible negative consequences of delaying puberty on neurodevelopment. To further address this question, larger-scale, longitudinal studies are required to increase our understanding of the possible neurodevelopmental impacts of delaying puberty in transgender youth.

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What makes you think these results are disappointing? This is typical scientific language.

I think perhaps readers are applying the more emphatic, less scholarly language of daily life. That isn’t how people write up scientific results

JandamiHash · 18/04/2025 18:48

Bogginsthe3rd · 18/04/2025 15:46

But the study did show differences in the MRI brain scans between individuals. This is clearly just a small part of an argument but PP did provide objective criteria.

Edited

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How does this conclude that men and women are sexed based on their brains? Or that transwomen have “lady brains”?

Bogginsthe3rd · 18/04/2025 18:51

JandamiHash · 18/04/2025 18:48

How does this conclude that men and women are sexed based on their brains? Or that transwomen have “lady brains”?

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I don't think you understood the paper at all. I'm not sure how to approach this with you without stating the obvious.

BunfightBetty · 18/04/2025 18:54

poetryandwine · 18/04/2025 18:28

Yes, the brains of those who have been transgender since a young age are more likely to be atypical of their biological sex

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Yet the offending pattern for transwomen mirrors that of other men, not women. Well, I say that, but when it comes to sex offences the data suggests trans identified males are more likely to commit sex offences than other males. So couldn’t be further from the typical female pattern.

So whatever any MRI might show, it isn’t going to be the full story, and can’t be used as a proxy for working out risk. As women are vastly more likely to be attacked in mixed sex changing facilities than single sex spaces, males will need to stay out of them. Regardless of what any brain scan might show.

Helleofabore · 18/04/2025 18:55

poetryandwine · 18/04/2025 18:46

What makes you think these results are disappointing? This is typical scientific language.

I think perhaps readers are applying the more emphatic, less scholarly language of daily life. That isn’t how people write up scientific results

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I think you used this to prop up a strong statement.

“Being truly transgender is a measurable biological phenomenon”

I agree it is typical scientific language for a weak correlation.

So, again. Do you or don't you have the link to the actual paper that Bakker presented with the results?

Or did you read the abstract only?

CowboyJoanna · 18/04/2025 18:57

AlizeeEasy · 18/04/2025 17:55

Are you comfortable with the idea of a trans man in a cell with a woman? Some are big burly bearded blokes, I’m more uncomfortable with that idea really

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No they're not. "Trans men" are butch lesbians.