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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

I am Janice Turner's No 1 fan - another excellent article

538 replies

Stopmakingsense · 23/09/2017 07:19

This one picks up in particular the huge rise in women identifying as men, and the increasing inability of anyone being able to question it:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/even-asking-questions-is-now-transphobic-ztk3rlrfk?shareToken=1f64a5116171eb54a9a866590e6432ec

OP posts:
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nauticant · 27/09/2017 11:38

I just cannot believe you wrote trans people's brains are tiny!!! That must make you like the biggest transphobe on the planet.

SelmaAndJubjub · 27/09/2017 11:41

I AM LITERALLY KILLING THEM Grin

ReanimatedSGB · 27/09/2017 12:03

Slightly OT but I am pretty sure that Wossname the bloke who was in the space station last year did a lot of correcting of interviewers who said he was the first Brit in space, and bigging up the fact that the first Brit in space was a woman, and not him.

QueenOfTheSardines · 27/09/2017 12:45

nauticant it does indeed work like that.

The other great thing is that people can be transed after, or even before in some cases, death.

So when Helen Sharman dies it can go>>
Going into space is a very masculine thing to do. All that exercise and science and not being able to do your nail varnish in zero gravity.
No proper woman would be interested in doing something like that.
Helen Sharman did wear trousers a lot and her hair wasn't super long, and she wanted to go, and did go into space, this indicates her innerfelt desire to be a man. If she didn't want to be a man she would have stayed at home in a floral dress.
Therefore HS was actually trans and therefore the first and second brits to ever go into space were both men, and everyone can relax.

Transing dead gender nonconforming people is shit. Basically it means that any women who has ever done anything of note outside of gender role must've been a man, instantly erasing the possibility that women can do anything outside gender role... The whole thing is entirely circular.

nauticant · 27/09/2017 12:54

Actually, we can trans Helen Sharman right now, no bother.

Here she is, identifying as a man by wearing man's clothes:

I am Janice Turner's No 1 fan - another excellent article
SomeDyke · 27/09/2017 13:04

"Also remember that the studies of trans people's brains are tiny. "
Same double-take for me as well!

As well as being small sample size, one study I looked at that claimed to find trans closer to their identified wotsit than their actual also made the classic error of using the SAME set of subjects as training set and test set. Basically, take a smallish set of normal males and females. Measure the size of a whole bunch of brain regions, and pick the one (or combination of measurements), that best distinguishes the males in your sample from the females (that's the training of your wonderful male or female brain classifier). They then used that on the brains of trans folks, and claimed that TIMs had brains more like females, and so on.
Except you FIRST have to show that your wonderful male or female brain identifier WORKS on non-trans brains other than the ones you used to train it, that it does what it says on the tin in the first place.Only then does the result on trans brains possibly mean something.

With small datasets and measure enough stuff, you're very likely to find stuff that just by chance can distinguish your particular set of males from your particular set of females. And if you add OTHER data (like your trans test set or even a non-trans test set), then it is quite probable that it will tend to lie in between the extremes of the groups you trained on (just since the measure was specifically chosen to separate those particular groups anyway!).

For these reasons, I tend to stick to the recent larger samples work that seems to be showing that actually there isn't a meaningful categorization of brains into male-type and female-type. Although unfortunately the New Scientist report on this work took it is a 'gender is non-binary' result. Although at least based on that criterion we are almost all non-binary in terms of our 'brain-region-gender', so why bother with the concept at all?

SomeDyke · 27/09/2017 13:11

She wasn't even wearing the proper sort of female spacesuit, as we all know from reading the literature.

Or perhaps NASA has gone all 'gender-neutral' with their uniform, seems to be the current response to any kerfuffle..............

I am Janice Turner's No 1 fan - another excellent article
Stopmakingsense · 27/09/2017 13:56

..And yet Horizon presents it as proven science.....

OP posts:
SelmaAndJubjub · 27/09/2017 14:11

Pathetic effort by Sharman. Pink brain in zero gravity looks like this.

I am Janice Turner's No 1 fan - another excellent article
vaginafetishist · 27/09/2017 14:21

Grin None of this is funny but you lot are keeping my spirits up

JessicaEccles · 27/09/2017 14:25
  1. I am now going to call myself ' a cunt identified woman' - and demand this is used instead of the revolting 'cis'.
  1. My doctor told me he didn't like prescribing HRT for more than five years. So I am going to tell him I a actually a MAN who transformed to female - and he can't look at the records as it's transphobic. Therefore I can get HRT FOR EVAH.
ErrolTheDragon · 27/09/2017 14:36

Well, of course 'gender' isn't a binary. Its more like a large set of (culturally determined) different continuums isn't it?

Someone ought to set Ben Goldacre onto this area of Bad Science.

OlennasWimple · 27/09/2017 14:45

It's a good job we can still laugh about all this crap.

the whole pink brain stuff bothers me intensely - it's the one area where I've got drawn into FB arguments (which is never a productive use of anyone's time, let's be honest). It's scary how people just take something vaguely science-y at face value and don't bother to engage their (pink or blue) brains further to consider whether this might in fact be bollocks.

It reminds me of when India Knight or Kelley Maloney was on Loose Women and they tried to explain transgenderism by likening a developing foetus in utero to being in a washing machine with different hormones floating around and sometimes the girl ones stick and sometimes the boy ones stick... Angry

busyboysmum · 27/09/2017 14:51

So is there a reason why doctors really don't care about the effects of giving these drugs to trans people? And why the trans community is sticking its fingers in its ears and going lalala can't hear you when people try to warn of the dangers? I saw somewhere that the average age of a ladyboy is around 40 due in some measure to these hormones being so bad for them (and other reasons of course).

Walkingdead11 · 27/09/2017 15:43

Neuroscience is a relatively new science and one we don't yet have much knowledge of. However, that does not mean it is without merit. Reducing what we do know to pink brain blue brain is nonsense. We know that certain parts of male brains and certain parts of female brains do behave differently....we just don't fully understand how or what mechanisms are attributing to those differences. I really don't see why some of you have such an issue with this? Are you denying that transgender may occur in the brain? We simply do not yet have the necessary knowledge to understand why some people are transgender.

Backingvocals · 27/09/2017 15:53

I don't at all have an issue with some people being transgender and I have no take on where it stems from (genetic, social, whatever). I do have an issue with someone claiming to be a biological woman on the basis of clothes and makeup.

nauticant · 27/09/2017 16:20

It's because of this:

Neuroscience is a relatively new science and one we don't yet have much knowledge of

that this:

Are you denying that transgender may occur in the brain?

is simply an assertion with little meaning. Some of the changes being proposed have such massive potential consequences that I'd like to see some evidence. Since learning more and gathering evidence is such a good thing, let's have everyone, people from the trans community, rad-fems, etc, get behind research into what leads to gender dysmorphia. And also whether gender dysmorphia is common to everyone who is seeking to transition. And that would be just the start.

SelmaAndJubjub · 27/09/2017 16:22

So is there a reason why doctors really don't care about the effects of giving these drugs to trans people?

What on earth makes you think we don't care? But GPs are in a difficult position if an NHS gender specialist clinic has prescribed the hormones to start with. Technically we are not obliged to prescribe, but it would be very unusual to refuse to prescribe what a consultant has recommended - normally the only reason we refuse is if it's some exotic drug not usually given in primary care - which of course cannot be said of HRT.

Also, for mature adult trans people, I am not sure it would be right to refuse. I might think they are making a unwise choice, but it's not my body. As long as they have had proper counselling about risk, I don't think it is unethical to prescribe. My worry would be much more about prescribing to children and teenagers.

SelmaAndJubjub · 27/09/2017 16:28

It reminds me of when India Knight or Kelley Maloney was on Loose Women

I think you mean India Willoughby. India Knight is both a woman and gender critical so we must not send bad vibes her way Wink

QueenOfTheSardines · 27/09/2017 16:30

But women get refused various drugs for a variety of reasons all the time Confused

Poster upthread was refused HRT
I've heard of many women who have been refused drugs that have nasty effect on foetuses as they are of child bearing age, even when they are not sexually active / not straight / have completed their families etc
I'm sure there's more

QueenOfTheSardines · 27/09/2017 16:31

I was refused a certain type of contraceptive pill because of increased risks even though I'd been happy on it for years.

QueenOfTheSardines · 27/09/2017 16:32

I mean you're one doctor and so it's not about you personally, but about how - as in the example - women are refused HRT - and they are - and trans people are not. That sort of thing.

I suspect the cosmetic surgery stuff causes ructions as well. Women can't get breast reductions often - I'm not sure how easy it is for a TIM to get "top" surgery.

Anlaf · 27/09/2017 16:56

Btw, Janice T noes we are fans! twitter.com/VictoriaPeckham/status/912788907426762752

bet you 20p she's already a mumsnetter

SelmaAndJubjub · 27/09/2017 17:12

But women get refused various drugs for a variety of reasons all the time

Not usually when an NHS consultant has recommended the drug. Occasionally a GP will decline to prescribe something complicated because they don't have the expertise to monitor it (or because their CCG has banned it) but then the consultant can prescribe it themselves.

Ereshkigal · 27/09/2017 17:34

SomeDyke that's an excellent post re study samples. Plenty of food for thought.

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