Feminism and the idea of a man or woman trapped in the wrong body are contradictory ideas

[EatsBrainsAndLeaves]

This post is in response to another thread where posters wanted to discuss this, but didn't want to derail the thread. So I said I would start the thread here.

A basic element of feminism is that women and men are born as that sex - biologically men/women, but society socialises us to behave as our alloted gender. Gender is the idea that women and men behave in certain ways. And we are all socialised in this even if we reject it or try to as adults.

For example, research shows that people treat the same babies differently depending on whether they are told they are boys or girls. The media pumps images to our DCs about what a girl or a boy should be interested in, play with and wear. Teachers are more likely to allow boys to speak out to the whole class than girls - well researched.

Feminism challenges these gender constructs and says that girls and boys can enjoy doing the same things, etc. Transexuals talk about being born in the wrong body e.g. born in a male body, but feeling like they are really a girl/woman.

But this is obviously at odds with feminism. Sex is a biological fact. You are born in a male or female body. Behaving or feeling like a man/woman is supposed to feel, is an artificial construct. Because what does a man or woman feel like? We only feel like ourselves as individuals. So any idea of feeling a man or a woman or a boy or a girl is based on an artifacial idea of how a boy/girl is supposed to feel.

So the basic idea of being born in the wrong body, is contradictory to the basic ideas of feminism.

You do know that transexuals are not usually intersex?

Obscure intersex conditions are intersex. They don't stop XY people with penis and testes being male/men/boys.

Why is intersex being used to justify trans? It has nothing to do with it. Trans is not a physical condition, it is a feeling that some men have believing they are women and far fewer women have believing they are men.

Bringing intersex into the argument just serves to obscure the reality that trans is a belief system - it's not based in biology nor is it based in science.

No, I'm not saying that Bennifer. But we're not talking about identifying males as females or females as males. Your example that you linked to was about people who are neither male nor female. As it is a rare condition in the UK, it would be more difficult to identify than people who are male or female. If we lived in a society where almost 50% of the population had that condition, our sexing methods at birth would be primarily about determining who had that condition and that would be the norm.

Also, androgen insensitivity can happen in both females (XX) and males (XY).

In males, the body will appear externally completely female, but they will have testicles and no female internal reproductive organs.

They are technically male, although society would have trouble seeing them as such as there are no immediately obvious clues (although are upon investigation).

A female (XX) person with androgen sensitivity will appear externally female, and is female.

And sex is an easy concept to define, even if there are small group of intersex people whose sex is hard to ascertain. Their conditions don't detract from the overall reality of the two sexes - male and female, which exist to reproduces all sorts of living organisms.

Yes Eats, but it makes a substantial point - the fact that sex / gender isn't clear cut. Yes, with chromosome testing we would discover that a baby is genetically male - but to describe them as unambiguously biologically male would be wrong, given how many "males" were brought up as females with that condition

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculine_Barbin:_Being_the_Recently_Discovered_Memoirs_of_a_Nineteenth-century_French_Hermaphrodite

The reason it's necessary to discuss such cases before moving onto transexuals is that is demonstrates the point I think has been successfully made now. Ok, I'll drop the biological sex part now, the point has been made.

"What chemicals in their heads do men who think they are women have, that men who don't think they are women don't have."

Well, how about some of the below?

"Culture and socialisation play a role in determining if you develop a male brain (stronger
interest in systems) or female brain (stronger interest in empathy). But these studies of
infancy strongly suggest that biology also partly determines this.
Some of the most convincing evidence for biological causes comes from studies of the
effects of hormones. There was a time when women were prescribed a synthetic female
hormone (diesthylstibestrol), in an attempt to prevent repeated spontaneous miscarriages.
Boys born to such women are likely to show more female-typical, empathizing
behaviours, such as caring for dolls. And if a female rat is injected at birth with
testosterone, she shows faster, more accurate maze learning, compared to a female rat
who has not been given such an injection. So masculinizing the rat hormonally improves
her spatial systemizing.
Some important lessons have been learnt from studies of clinical conditions. Male babies
born with IHH (idiopathic hypogonadotrophic hypogonadism) have very small testes
(and therefore very low levels of testosterone) and they are worse at spatial aspects of
systemizing, relative to normal males. Other male babies born with Androgen
Insensitivity (AI) Syndrome (testosterone is an androgen) are also worse at systemizing.
Compare these to female babies born with CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia), who
have unusually high levels of androgens and who have enhanced spatial systemizing,."

The above article is from Simon Baron Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at Cambridge University.

Bennifer

Visible biological sex is simply the easiest and most convenient way of classifying a person as male or female (but not the only way, and not 100% accurate, just mostly accurate.

Biological sex is clear cut in terms of genetic testing (in the very small percentage of people whose external sex is ambiguous). Not being immediately visible does not mean not being clear cut or easily defineable.

I don't think you have demonstrated the point at all because I still have no idea what point it is that you are trying to demonstrate.

You seem to be suggesting, again and again, pretty offensively, that intersex people don't have their own biological sex, and that what they are is somehow not 'clear cut.'

It is clear cut.

But you seem to be making it not clear cut by calling intersex people males brought up as females or females brought up as males.

This is just an analogy not a comparison

For example, people with meningitis are usually easily diagnosed because they display common signs (stiff neck, avoidance of light, and skin rash).

Some people display only one or two of these signs, and a few display none at all.

The truth of the matter is easily confirmed with a lumbar puncture test.

Thus, it can be said that meningitis is easily defined and identified. It doesn't mean you have to always be able to spot it at first glance.

Larry, while I don't agree with Baron Cohen, I really appreciate you actually coming forward and saying that the male brain is interested in systems and the the female brain is more empathetic.

At least now you have brought forward a definition it means we can have a go at deciding who is female and who isn't. It is certainly an improvement on a non-defined feeling in somebody's head.

Seahouses,

I have no idea whether what he says is true and it is not my hypothesis but his. I suspect, however that few (if any) others on this thread have the real academic knowledge or ability to dispute it either. They just believe something to be true as a matter of faith. I think the fact that hormones can strongly alter animal brains is at least evidence in the direction of that hypothesis.

The point is what if there was a male who, for some reason, was born with a "male" brain and female genitalia and chromosomes, possible due to hormones his mother produced or took whilst he was in utero. Should he not have a right to "be" a female should he/she so choose?

I think it's clear enough that this thread isn't about the majority of people for whom their sexual identity is clear cut. The fact that people are born with ambiguous sexual identity is sufficient to demonstrate that sexual identity can be ambiguous.

Mary Wollstonecraft knew nothing about chromosomes, so what was she talking about when she wrote about women? Would she have included Herculine Barbin?

Everybody is born with an ambiguous sexual identity because you can't ask a newborn baby how it feels about gender roles.

That has nothing to do with intersex people whose sex is not ambiguous just because it is different to yours.

Bennifer

Visible ambiguity is not the same as ambiguity.

Not everyone's sex is obvious at first glance, but there is still no ambiguity when it comes to investigating the matter, and its pretty easy to find out.

Biological sex is not ambiguous (though it may be visibly so).

I really don't understand what the fuss is here.

If a person identifies themself as a woman - they are a woman and entitled to be treated as such if they so desire. Nobody has the right to tell them otherwise.

If feminism starts making an issue of this it will become as unpleasant and discriminatory as the mysoginists it's suposed to be fighting.

Larry, if somebody born with a female body and male mind (by BC's definition) wants to define themselves as a woman, it doesn't really bother me personally.

I have no interest in banding together with a group of people in any situation, be that personal choice (women's groups) or by state control (wards, school facilities, prisons) on the basis of how much somebody has a preference for systems or empathy. I don't really feel a great desire to share a ward with people based on their liking of systems.

If most people do feel that way, then society should be organised in that, perhaps with some kind of test at a young age to determine if people had male or female brains. People like me who felt that the brain thing was not my identity- well special arrangements could presumably be made for me in terms of which showers I was told to use and so on, if I didn't want to go into the empathetic showers.

larrygrylls Forgive me for bumping in your discussion with Seahouses, but as a medical/semi-academic person (albeit not in this area), I found your point interesting and would like to explore it.

"The point is what if there was a male who, for some reason, was born with a "male" brain and female genitalia and chromosomes, possible due to hormones his mother produced or took whilst he was in utero. Should he not have a right to "be" a female should he/she so choose?"

The difficulty with this statement is that if male/female is a biological sexual fact (which many of us believe), then it is not something you can choose to be, or have the right to be. It is something you are from birth.

This is not to say you cannot express a different gender identity, and choose to live in a masculine or feminine way as perceived by society.

In your example, if the person was born with female genitalia and chromosomes, they would be female (by most consensus), if they're born with ambiguous genitalia and female chromosomes, they are still female. If they are born with ambiguous genitalia and intersex chromosomes, they are intersex, etc. etc.

Biological sex and gender identity are considered two different things by many people. One is flexible and chooseable, and one is assigned from birth.

I get the impression, some people on this thread are very skilled at dismissing others points and trying to obscure the issue. This isn't a debate, it feels more like opinion bashing.

StuckintheBellJar

I completely disagree with your statement for one reason alone. We are not simply what we feel, although we should be allowed to express how we feel however we like.

I posted links earlier about persons who are transablist, transspecies, and otherkin. These are all people whose internal image of themselves and 'sense of self' does not match their external body. Some of them are also transgendered and testify to the similarity of the feelings involved in both cases.

They have every right to express themselves as feeling they are another species, or disabled (when they are actually fully abled). And in the same way, I believe and support people who are transgendered in expressing their preferred gender.

But I cannot agree with 'statements of fact' that are factually untrue. I will agree with any person's right to express what they feel they are. But if they say they are that, then there are real life criteria to be met, not just thoughts/feelings.

I'm not concerned about demonstrating what gender transgender people are. That is up to them.

I just want people who don't define themselves by internal gender identity and want to identify based on biological sex to be allowed to have an identity of their choosing.

Is gender really simply defined by what you happen to have in your pants, or even your genome though? It's not that simple.

StuckintheBellJar

Gender identity is subjective, socially influenced/changeable, and largely based on feelings.

Biological sex is objective (usually externally, and certainly chromosomally) and assigned from birth.

Man/woman used to be based on biological sex, which is why some people have difficulty with what is essentially a changing definition, and words are still necessary to describe sex based on biology, rather than gender identity based on preference.

I don't think anybody is defining gender as chromosones or pant contents though, are they?

Ok, I think that the point I'm getting at is; I don't really think that biological sex (and even that isn't always a certainty as others have pointed out) actually matters that much once you get beyond the medical sphere.

Human culture and society is fluid and changeable, as it should be. There are even socities which have a third gender. It's not a new thing. Denying, questioning or even making relevant a person's biological sex when they choose not to, seems pointless. I'm not sure why we need to do that?