Following on from the TERF thread...

[CailinDana]

Trying to get my head straight on this. Surely the whole malarkey around transwomen wanting to be recognised as women even though they have penises will eventually actually help to break down the idea of gender?

What I mean is, if a person with a penis can be labelled a woman simply because they want to be labelled in that way, surely gender becomes meaningless as it tells you nothing meaningful about a person except perhaps the clothes they like to wear?

This is a half-formed thought, feel free to develop/challenge.

A woman is an adult human female.

An intersex person raised as female since birth may also be regarded as a woman.

The existence of a tiny number of people with disorders of sexual development does not negate the reality of reproductive sex, nor the consequences of the oppressive social hierarchy (gender) that has been built on top of it.

then how would you define someone with physical male characteristics but something in the brain that says otherwise. What are they?

A person with a penis is either male or intersex. A person with a vagina is either female or intersex. Even if the cause is biological, this person would be male or intersex (although the fact that this person may have fathered children rules out intersex).

I shouldn't really get involved in trans threads. I get the rage when I do. But they bring up so many fundamentals that are about me as a woman and as a feminist that they are like moth to a flame.

Brilliant, Kim, if you feel more comfortable not being a man. I don't blame you, in some senses, cos I wouldn't want to be one either. But just because you don't want to be a man does not mean that you are a woman. I know that in this society it might do and I don't know the answer. I do know that it makes me so angry to see and hear the erasure of woman as a defined entity in law and in the practice of a minute minority , given that it is that very entity that results in shocking treatment exactly because women are women, as almost universally understood.

Most often, forms ask for sex so that they can track statistics on participation of men and women in particular activities or services. Sometimes it's to help with identification. Sometimes it is probably irrelevant.

Collection of statistical data is one of the areas where GRCs can lead to the obfuscation of women's lived experience. For example, in diversity statistics collected by workplaces or in relation to crime statistics. IMO these should be exempted from the GRA.

But it isn't a question of fitting into a binary world. Trans people already have documentation of being able to travel, drive a car etc. It is just that they want different documentation as a source of validation.

How does that compare to my female relative who cannot travel abroad because nobody will insure her and cannot drive a car because nobody will insure her, due to a rare medical condition? She is in a tiny proportion of the population, like trans women, but the whole of third wave feminism hasn't decided to make her condition the redefinition of womanhood, identity or demanded everyone refer to themselves as a woman who either does or does not have the condition. Who is socially validating her?

kim, do you think you are female by gender or female by sex? Sorry if that's too personal, it's just that you said "It's surprising how often you get asked your gender".

Documentation with a different sex on to that supplied on the original documentation.

Rejecting and hating it does not make it not so. An anorexic is not fat. An otherkin is not an animal. An amputee suffering phantom limb pain does not have the limb. You are a man who does not want to live with the social constructs placed on men by patriarchal society.

Why do you ask these questions? You always say how much these statements hurt you.

Kim, you personally are a woman because that is what you feel yourself to be, and that is a. the law in the UK and b. courtesy.

That is totally different to asking what is a person with a male body who thinks they shouldn't have one. Materially, that person is a male with a brain that thinks they shouldn't be. What they would like to be their social identity to be is a different matter, and will vary from person to person in that situation.

Yes Kim, so the documentation for you is a matter of social validation at job interviews etc.

Unlike for my relative who would use that documentation to be able to legally drive a car, which she can't do currently as she can't get it.

Can you see that distinction? Social validation is not the main purpose of owning a passport, insurance documents etc.

Kim, I'd never thought about the certificates thing. That must be hard. Surely that at least could be resolved.

Flora isn't arguing social vs. biological. A brain thinking something, whether caused by social or biological reasons does not change the material reality of the whole body.

I could get ergot poisoning tomorrow and believe I was an otter. It would be caused by biology but I'm not an otter.

I don't know how it feels to be trans or whether it is social or biological. I know humans are a sexually dimorphic species consisting of female and male (and some with congenital abnormalities resulting in an intersex condition). A woman is an adult human female. A man is an adult human male.

Whatever else a person may feel about themselves or about how society has constructed required behaviour and expectations based on sex does not change those facts. Femininity and masculinity are constructs and cause pain for many many people but biological sex is not a construct. It is a material reality.

And acknowledging those facts doesn't have to mean they can't be socially validated through a passport, or that people don't believe the person's brain is telling them that.

If I were you, Kim, I think I'd work out why I didn't want to be a man. You want to be recognised as a woman so that you are not recognised as a man. That's not what a woman is, yet you are one, according to the law. You don't want to be, yet you are, and you wonder why there are multiple threads on trans issues?

I am a woman because I am a woman. Not because I feel like one or don't feel like a man. That my reality has been obliterated legally because society can't deal with non stereotypically masculine men drives me insane. And that men thought that the rational solution is the one we've got makes me despair.

It's a man's world...

I have no idea what I'd do if I were you Kim, because I'm not you. It is why it is such a pointless thought experiment when people are asked what they'd do or how they'd feel if they woke up tomorrow and were the opposite sex.

I can't really have any idea what it would feel like. I think I wouldn't really care, and I think it would be preferable to waking up and finding out I am six months pregnant, but I can't really know. Because my brain doesn't tell me I should or shouldn't be a woman. It just sees my body and tells me I am, but in a radically different way to how it told me I was 15 years ago. So I have no idea what it is like to be you.

If I were trans, I expect I would prefer to think of the cause as biological rather than social. I don't think we each have any particular insight into our biology, a person with cancer has no insight into the cause of it (environmental or genetic).

Regardless, as we have been over many times. I do not oppose certain accommodations being made for trans people. I do oppose the erasure of the material reality of the female sex and the erosion of women's rights.

Never mind. If we're going down the male/female brain rabbit hole, I'm done.

I was laughing with my boss about this today. I perform feminity passably and am pretty comfortable in my skin (privilege!). My boss is pretty much masculine norm. We could never live together. However, we are like two peas in a pod in a work context. And I think that is where, for us, socialisation is least at play.