I can't get my head around the phrase "Transwomen are women".

[nikkinack]

Sorry for another thread on the topic, but I was looking at my local candidates and the only female candidate is for the Green party, and she has retweeted that phrase (with the addition "Transmen are men) a couple of times today.

It seems like doublethink to me, every time I try to unpick the statement I get all messed up in the process.

So, if transwomen are women, why call them transwomen? Surely just by defining them as transwomen you are saying they are different to women? Transwomen can't insist on women using the label cis and then lay claim to the standalone word 'woman'.

So transwomen are women, ciswomen are women. The word woman applies to people of either category, but they are still separate categories within the single word, which we can't describe. We are not the same, but to state 'Transwomen are women' is to insist that we are.

I don't know how anyone who makes this statement can square all of this. It hurts my head just trying to work out what they mean.

I have a lot of compassion for trans people who get bathroom panic, and I think it would be better if all toilets were gender neutral and totally private (floor to ceiling doors, private sink etc.)

But as it stands, I don't want women and girls to be frightened by people they read as men in their spaces. Sorry, they're my priority.

Here is one listing differences in structure and size both overall and in various areas.:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763413003011

The wiki page has a lot of good info and links to peer reviewed studies on it as well:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_sex_differences

It's probably quite uncomfortable for women who have been raped and sexually assaulted in public toilets to have someone who is noticeably male in there too.

The issue over toilets and changing areas (totally different to the trans women wanting to volunteer in rape crisis centres) is about male violence against women and trans people. But biological women are being asked to budge up and shut up to make space for trans women, at the expense of their own comfort and feelings.

Ubik1 wrote - "it's not the patriarchy that is demanding I uncritically accept trans-activist arguments about gender identity - it's young left wing men and women."

StillLostAtTheStation wrote - "patriarch Clarkson".

In a feminist context, I tend to think of a patriarch as someone who believes that the gendered hierarchy of society, which underpins the oppression of female people, is a good thing. This can include e.g. a page 3 model or a prime minister or a billionaire. I don't see why Clarkson is a patriarch, but "young left wing men and women", who approve of the gender hierarchy and influence trans legislation, apparently aren't patriarchs.

Yy hermione, and I think that most women who aren't familiar with these trans debates would see what they read as a man in a dress in the women's bathroom and think "shit who is this pervert?? Why is he here?? Is he a peeping tom??"
Which is very unfair on the majority of trans women who just want to have a wee and wouldn't dream of predating on women, but this is likely how many women and girls would react. I definitely would have thought that when I was a child/adolescent and had no idea that trans people even existed - I would have been terrified!

"Mary, did the womens' brains just have a picture of a dress and some makeup inside them?"

No they did actual research rather than pull whatever suited their ideology best:

www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/males-and-females-differ-in-specific-brain-structures

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763413003011

Posting peer reviewed studies on here regarding gender differences that do not conform to the gender feminist dogma is like posing studies about evolution on creationist websites.

Facts must conform to the ideology or be dismissed...

Mary, I'm going to disregard the Wikipedia entry, but considering the first article, it suggests that there might be sex based brain differences. Some of these conclusions are based on animal studies, which I'm not sure are relevant to a debate about gender dysmorphia in adult humans. Other factors considered are impacts of chromosomes (I believe most MTF trans women are chromosomally male but happy to be proven wrong) and environmental impacts (but trans women are raised and socialised as male). IMO none of this adequately explains why someone who is chromosomally male and raised as a male would "feel like a woman".

We have known for a long time that on average men have brains with larger volume and slightly different density, in comparison to women. What no one has ever been able to show, is that this makes any difference.
And Trans people have the same size brains on average, to their corresponding biological sex.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10684179/Men-and-women-do-not-have-different-brains-claims-neuroscientist.html

"So is it okay to say "women have vaginas", or is that transphobic?

I've been racking my brain as how to define it any other way really. If I'm being told by someone with a penis how I have to define the word "woman" that make me quite annoyed."

If it makes it easier to get your head around it think of hermaphrodites.

Hermaphrodites have a vagina and penis and on occasion both XX and XY chromosome pairs, yet mentally they can identify as either male or female.

Just think of a transgender as one step farther than that and as such has the wrong sex organ rather than both.

I thought the differences were thought to be down to brain plasticity - am not a neuro scientist though so may be talking undergraduate bollocks. Ahem.

No, I won't do that. I won't be told how to define womanhood by men.

Mary, I think you mean intersex. It is not the same thing as being transgender.

"But biological women are being asked to budge up and shut up to make space for trans women, at the expense of their own comfort and feelings."

I had this discussion with someone in the military years back (weird, but true). A few decades ago, gay people weren't permitted to serve in the military. Then they were. Many servicemen and women were uncomfortable with serving cheek-by-jowl - sharing bedspaces, communal showers and toilets (literally in the case of the Royal Marines etc) with people that were potentially sexually attracted to them. But, in the end, they had to live with that, because gays serving in the military was the right thing to do.

Yes, ok, generally people don't suffer at the hands of homosexual violence. But, life is about balancing rights. There's no easy division.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10684179/Men-and-women-do-not-have-different-brains-claims-neuroscientist.html

0 links to any studies she has done in that article.

www.aston.ac.uk/EasysiteWeb/getresource.axd?AssetID=80901&type=full&servicetype=Attachment

Many intersex people really don't like being used as pawns in trans activists' arguments (they also don't really like being called hermaphrodites). Intersex people are in a particularly vulnerable and troubling position in that most of them are coercively assigned a sex at birth and have their genitals operated on (/mutilated) so that they cosmetically appear to have the 'right' ones. It's appalling. They are then raised as whatever sex their parents/doctors decide, and very many intersex people have dreadful health conditions which really impair quality of life.

Even aside from the fact that glibly comparing the circumstances of trans people with intersex people is quite offensive to this very marginalised group, your point also doesn't work mary. Almost all intersex people remain living as the sex they were coercively assigned at birth - it's fairly unusual for them to transition to the other sex. When they do, it's often because they don't really fit into either sex category socially, and their personalities fit better in one rather than the other, e.g. a person who has been raised as a girl, but feels more comfortable being viewed socially as a girl and being allowed to do stereotypically masculine things (which is very reasonable!)

Here's a paper on this by Leonard Sax -
mega.co.nz/#!JIcmyJIS!lL_NLI5Vfakr_FnvbP_iclTsYF9I09OykqUZyZo0o3g

Mary, lots of transgender people don't consider themselves men or women. What brain structure do you think they have?

And what aspect of brain structure do you think women share that requires us to need a separate shower area?

"Mary, I'm going to disregard the Wikipedia entry"

That is your choice but it has links to good peer reviewed studies for many of the claims.

I certainly disregard the claims that are unsupported by good studies etc for obvious reasons but to disregard all of the article is just because its Wikipedia means a waste of time looking for stuff elsewhere that will be in it.

Anyway the one i linked said they searched all articles published between 1990 and 2013.

A total of 126 articles were included in the study, covering brains from individuals as young as birth to 80 years old so its pretty comprehensive.

This lists her fairly extensive body of work as a neuroscientist

www.aston.ac.uk/lhs/staff/az-index/rippong/

Mary, some of the articles on your wiki link were about how gay men have the same brain structures as straight women. Do you think that gay men are actually women too?

"Mary, lots of transgender people don't consider themselves men or women. What brain structure do you think they have?

And what aspect of brain structure do you think women share that requires us to need a separate shower area?"

1. A scan would be needed to know that.

1. The same one that focuses on a petty point that would never be seriously challenged or have its boundaries crossed when people are discussing a very important issue i expect.

gowether -
95% OF RAPES ARE COMMITTED BY MEN, 95% OF RAPE VICTIMS ARE WOMEN.
WOMEN ARE VICTIMS OF MALE SEXUAL VIOLENCE
EVERY.
SINGLE.
DAY.

Comparing women's legitimate fear of male sexual violence with straight people's fear of gay people is so offensive.

I'm sorry to get all shout-y capitals-y, but seriously!!!!

Women's very real fear of the very real risk of male violence isn't petty. I find it quite surprising a woman would think it was.