Conciliatory Conversation On gender

[FairAdvocate]

Hello!

In the last few months I have been reflecting on the transgender and feminism debate and I feel I've got a few things to share with you on it from a perspective perhaps you wont maybe often hear.

To preface and explain, I am a transgender woman/female and I'm writing here today not to create any kind of argument or discord but because I am here to say that I think there are things that my side of the floor has gotten wrong.

I want to start from a position of saying that I can understand why some of you feel erased or afraid. I dont say that in a patronising way; I say that from a position of being fully periceved as female in society and I often to feel quite vunerable because of that in certain situations just like I imagine many of you do aswell.

I started down this road from hearing about how a 'A woman is person who says they are a woman'. I must admit I never quite got it. It makes no sense but yet, there are many transgender people and allies who say this like it has any kind of meaning. Just like when they also say that 'woman' is defined by a certain set of catagories etc. Its always bothered me and I didnt know why. For me, the more I have medically tranisitioned to female, the more Ive began to understand the word and defintion of female cannot be just removed from the term woman.

Now, I suspect this is where most of you reading this will be in decent agreement of. However I suspect what I say next will cause more issues. I believe myself to be female not just because of my physical aspect having been changed through medical transition (albeit its not a perfect process) but also because I believe my brain structure to have formed female in the sex differences between male and female likely at birth. There are quite numerous studies that do back this up to an okay but emerging degree and I am also aware that there also a few that dont say that exactly but say my brain formed in a kind of third way. Either way, I think it is clear from these studies that my brain developed differently to that of a male and it has manifested itself so I am quite closely alligned with being female.

To me, I feel like this makes a me kind of intersex person but perhaps in a different kind of way than we usually think of the term intersex. Though, through my medical transition obviously estrogen has, at least for me, solidified my mind to that much more towards female.

With this in mind, I find myself looking at the world as a woman but a woman who came with unique challenges and hurdles that are difficult to explain. For example, often I have been accused of saying its wrong that GRS gives me a vagina and have often been shouted at and saying im just sexualising it. However for me, the vagina isnt and wasnt the main source of my distress. The main source of my distress is that I will never have ovaries and will never have children and be a biological mother. I have never been interested in having a child as a male in anyway.

For me, it reminds me that I am not just a straight forward female and many will not accept me. After some deep reflection I think that I have also accepted that I will have to go through hurdles and I will have to remove my male form in such a succfient manner that I can be accepted by other women in certain areas. With that in mind I have also come to accept that self indentifcation shouldnlt be accepted. That tears at me because I wish I lived in that ideal world. But, as a woman who is only attracted to men, I understand frankly just how dangerous some of them can be. But ive come to the conclusion that if we keep pushing for this we are only making it harder for everyone and it will only lead to further division, more toxicity and we will just tear oursevles apart.

I do look at my rights from five years ago and I look at them now and see how they have reduced from prisons putting people such as as me in mens prisions, to the recent SC ruling, sports associations banning us. I do truly think that most women do and have historically accepted women like me but I also understand that came with agreements and understandings. Understandings which I think have been overstepped in the last ten years.

While I dont and will never accept calling me a man; I can understand why some of you that are reading this may have gotten fed up and stopped caring. I suppose what I am really trying to say is, can we all start again? If I can accept that women (including myself) need protections in some areas and I can accept the need for medicalising, the dropping of self identification, the need for due process in changing your sex legally can you accept that Im not a man? Can you accept that calling me certain things and the misgendering, using terms such as Trans identified Male is actually causing more harm than it is good?

Can we not as women actually just get our heads together and work out a decent solution? I do believe we might remain with some differences. For example I do believe a woman is a person who was born with a female gender identity by which I mean the overall average structure of the brain and therefore mind. And I do understand you will use a defintion to be defined by your anatomy. But I do believe that actually both of these can be true. While I cant be 100 percent true to your defintion I have tried to be because of where my defintion has led me and I understand how difficult that may be for someone who has all the correct anatomy to understand. But I have tried to understand how you feel so I am trying to ask for the same.

Finally, thank you for reading my long message. I am very nervous to be leaving it. Please can I ask you from refraining to calling me names and refering to me as a man, this is a request and not a demand. I have very much put myself out there with this and I hope that what is reflected back to me is the same spirit in which I wrote this.

Thank you

P.s I hovered over the 'Post' button for about five minutes before clicking it.

There are no innate functional differences as far as I am aware and whilst people continue to look they tend to have pretty flawed science and often are made to retract elements of their conclusions- unfortunately after they initial publication

like the people who mistook a trauma indicator as a female brain indicator because on average more women suffer trauma

gee talk about using the results of abuse to try and perpetuate abuse

The neuroscientist, a specialist in this subject, interviewed in this article, explains here why it can appear as if there are some small differences, but these are actually caused by social/cultural patterns:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/24/meet-the-neuroscientist-shattering-the-myth-of-the-gendered-brain-gina-rippon

Tough one. I don’t feel abused by words on the internet, so I unfortunately can’t relate.

But, back to my original point, even if OP is wrong - there’s no need to stoop to arguing. And yes I’m aware that some may have felt she was being rude/abrasive, but two wrongs don’t make a right.

We can have discussion and debate without them becoming heated arguments.

Fair enough, that might be where we differ in opinion then. If a brain can be affected by society and cultural patterns, it can be gendered.

It can’t be sex based fact if it can be affected by gender stereotypes etc.

You can’t gender a uterus into someone, but you can gender a brain.

What’s your line between argument and debate.

He said lots of things that are a) factually incorrect and b) offensive to many but you don’t want us to ‘argue’?

Yes, you should probably have a longer “look on the internet” if you want to argue about this stuff with people who know what they are talking about.

See my previous point about not arguing, because arguments are unnecessary.

Precisely.

I think there’s a double standard, in honesty.

We talk about the erasure of women but OP was told she’s not being erased.

We call the use of “cis” abusive, but don’t acknowledge her request to be called, her. Or just not he.

We talk about women’s rights, and feelings, but won’t accept that OP may feel differently in her own situation. That’s “not our problem.” Okay, fine, but then you can’t ask her to consider your “problem.”

A post yesterday rightly pointed out that there’s no minimum threshold for rape, but then today someone is saying “I believe there’s only 5/6 trans Holocaust victims.” What do you mean, only.

Things like that!

This.

There is no “we”, is there? You don’t think those things, so no need to force team yourself with women who do.

That doesn’t answer my question but anyway.

Refusing to accept the totally unWORIADS idea that someone has changed sex and should be ‘accepted’ as a woman is not erasure. Nor is using accurate words to refer to someone male however unmanly they feel.

“We talk about women’s rights and feelings“

• yes - this is a Feminist board on a predominantly female parenting site and you want us to smile sweetly while we’re being insulted and having how it feels to be a woman mansplained to us?

No disrespect to OP (genuinely) but we don’t owe him anything.

Some women supporting this arm of the patriarchy is partly how we got here. Maybe examine why you feel less kinship with women than men? (I have assumed you are a women for the purposes of this post)

Oh. To be clear. Some people use “we” as a less combative way of communicating.

So, have I got this right? You are allowed to post nonsensical disinformation on here but if we correct you, we’re arguing and should just stop?

I know why I feel less kinship with a certain cohort of women, but that’s not what we’re discussing.

I can understand that some women are insulted (or abused, if we must) by being referred to as cisgender. I can also understand that some trans women are insulted by being referred to as he.

Balance. Both are entitled to feel however they feel, but then that means that both shouldn’t be insulting the other.

No.. someone did send an article earlier from a neuroscientist (I think) about brains. My actual response was “Fair enough.”

If I’m proven to be wrong, I’m proven to be wrong.

But you can’t prove that it’s right to tell someone they’re abusive for calling you something you don’t like, and then do the same to them. Not provably, anyway.

It’s not though. You are not any kind of “we” with me as a gender identity believer, and it’s very presumptuous for you to act like you are. You do you.

I wasn’t. I was avoiding the obviously argumentative “you all think…”

Firstly, that is presumptuous, secondly, it’s rude. I don’t claim to identify with your views at all. I’m just able to do so with less aggravation.

There’s absolutely no need to generalise about “all” when you’re replying to a single poster. We don’t all walk in lockstep.

I don't think there's a double standard.

When I refuse to call the OP "she", it's not because I want to erase the OP, but because I believe that referring to a male person as though they are female contributes to my own erasure. It makes the category I belong to meaningless. If the words "female" and "woman" are precious to me, which they are, I don't want the meanings of these words to be corrupted by redefining them to include "male" and "men".

It's not tit for tat. I object to being called "cis" for the exact same reason that I object to calling a male person female. It's an attempt to rewrite my reality, which I reject.

It's also not tit for tat in terms of considering each other's problems. Our problem has been created by members of the male sex demanding access to our spaces. There needs to be some acknowledgement that they should never have done that, that it was always wrong. We did not cause their problem and we are not the solution. And there is an obvious solution to their problem which does not infringe our rights: third spaces. We can point out this obvious solution but if they are not interested in implementing it then at the end of the day all we can do is stand firm and say, "Keep out of our spaces. Your gender identities are not our problem."

As for the Holocaust discussion, I don't think anyone was suggesting that "only" 5 or 6 trans Holocaust victims would be OK. To be clear, I was expressing doubts about whether trans people were actually targeted by the Nazis at all. Pink News did a report about this and they only managed to come up with five names. Two of them were Jewish and the others were prosecuted for homosexual acts. So it seems much more likely that those people were targeted by the Nazis for being gay or Jewish. Much is also made of the fact that the Nazis burned down Magnus Hirschfeld's institute. This is usually described as the Nazis destroying research about trans people. But the truth is that they burned the research library of a man who was both gay and Jewish. And that research covered a lot of topics, it was not specifically about trans people. Magnus Hirschfeld himself was not killed by the Nazis and survived the war, and one of his former colleagues went to work for the Nazis, carrying out grim experiments in concentration camps. Cross-dressing was also quite a popular activity among SS officers. So from what I can tell there is really no evidence that the Nazis persecuted trans people at all, and I find the attempts to rewrite history to put trans people at the front and centre of the Holocaust wholly distasteful and disrespectful to the memories of the millions of people who actually were murdered for who they were.

@FairAdvocate

Im starting to realise that im probably one of the youngest people in this thread.

Headline: Young And Extremely Online Man Has Little Life Experience And Limited Empathy Skills Shocker.

I want to be more gentle and kindly (must be my female brain) but I'm so, so, so, so sick of the world being shaped and dictated to by young and inexperienced people, who have barely any knowledge of raising children, caring for the elderly, becoming elderly, being vulnerable through age or pregnancy or caring responsibilities, but they've seen it all on tumblr/twitter/tiktok so us old bigots have to just get out of the way for their brave new beautiful rainbow world.

Heaven fucking forbid that older people actually know anything, might actually have learned anything from their years on this planet. I mean, I definitely thought as a teen that older people were useless idiots (anyone over 26, that is), but the difference was I didn't have political parties and massive public institutions falling over themselves to give my unformed brain what it thought it wanted, and the genuinely vulnerable be damned.

A belief in innate gender identity is simply irrational. There is no equivalence with recognising and acknowledging biological sex.

You are male bodied. The effect of puberty on the male body is such that men are, on average, taller, faster and very much stronger than women. Male bodied people should not be in female same-sex spaces or sports. Cross-sex hormones such as oestrogen do not counter the effects of male puberty.

The studies which suggest a male vs female brain are of very poor quality and do not in any way counter the binary nature of sex. The Supreme Court did not change the law, it confirmed the law as expressed in EA10.

Whilst I am sympathetic to your distress, it is not the case that your opinions sway these facts in any way. Please seek professional counselling to help you come to terms with who you are.

Since the ruling, I’ve seen more animosity from the trans community towards women, than vice versa, and some of the placards in that big London march were vile.

To be honest, even if there were differences between the brains and people that were at odds with their biological body (for want of a better term) then I’d feel empathy ( I already do have empathy for dysphoria) but it still doesn’t change the fact that male-bodied people - men - have no place being in women’s spaces.