Follow on thread to - Feeling sad and weary that feminists and trans-women are constantly pitted against one another.

[Datun]

Thread came to an end. But I wanted to reply to Debbie.

Debbie6666

Your transman in the cowboy hat?

It really it really is the height of enough to actually leverage the damage that the trans ideology does to try and get women to capitulate to it.

We are telling you how detrimental this is to women, including transmen, and you’re actually using it as a ner ner moment?

It’s beyond parody. And very deceitful.

Blimey Elendon that's an interesting question, I have no idea!
Just like I have no idea if I was gay at conception, gay at birth or gay when an attractive woman turned my head. I just know that I'm gay and no amount of people telling me a nice man would come along would change my mind.

Surely the only think that makes a brain 'female' is the signals to produce female hormones? If a transwoman' brain was female, would it give a signal to make oestrogen?

I know diddly squat about this stuff and how hormones are made. Can a man potentially make lots of oestrogen or a woman make lots of testosterone if the right 'signals' came from the brain or is the only way for this to happen with artifical hormones administered directly?

Yes but being gay is just what you are and who you like. Nothing is 'wrong' that needs 'correcting'.

I still have never had an answer to what 'feeling like a woman on the inside' actually means. It's all either biology or social constructs isn't it, there is nothing 'innate' about it. Unlike sexuality which is ultimately just a label for what you are sexually attracted to?

Thehairthebod there has been a lot of research to suggest trans people have different brains than the rest of us and other contrary research stating their brains are the same. At the end of the day nobody really knows.

All the leaders at my Sunday School certainly thought my lesbianism needed correcting!

But perfectly you don't "respectfully disagree".

You are comparing us to fascists. That isn't respectfully disagreement.

Your ideological belief that transwomen are female is backed up by neither science nor material reality.

Women and girls are female. Boys, men and transwomen are male.

Transwomen are not female.

It is very simple and obvious and straightforward.

Your rather slippery and dishonest presentation of your argument to be "transwomen are women" does not change those facts. It just makes you come across as someone who does not have the courage of their own convictions.

Arguing that transwomen are women is exactly the same thing as arguing that men are female. It's just couched in dishonest language and some not very convincing smoke and mirrors.

If you believe that transwomen are women you must argue that they are female, that males are females. But I bet you won't. Go on I double dare you...

there has been a lot of research to suggest trans people have different brains than the rest of us and other contrary research stating their brains are the same.

That's bollocks. No such research exists.

Still waiting for an answer to my 9.18 question btw...

perfectly

You seem to be fairly oblivious to the reasons why women are concerned.

It’s not an issue with science, specifically. Or being militant for the sake of it.

Lots of people are disadvantaged. Disabled people, LGBT. That why we have equality law. Sex discrimination is there for a reason.

To address the structural inequality in society.

And it is predicated on biology. There are only two sexes and one sex disadvantages the other.

Women aren’t disadvantaged by Sagittarians, or tennis players. It’s by men. As a class. Not some nebulous entity that we don’t quite understand.

We know what they do, we know why they do it, and we know how they do it.

Women are oppressed on the basis of their biology, and gender roles are the means by which it is done.

It’s not something that changes however you identify. However men identify, however women identify. It doesn’t change.

So you now have men beating women at sport, men taking women’s jobs in public office, violent men being transferred to female prisons, men being feted as the first ‘women’ to do something, men insisting that men are centred in feminism and demanding the end to sex segregation.

And at the same time, they are insisting that female biology is exclusionary (to men), it is a privilege, not a means of oppression and that sexual orientation doesn’t exist as it prevents men from sexual access to women.

This is men’s sexual rights activism in action. Based on biology. Not the way people think.

The benefit is only going one way.

Show me ANY way this ideology benefits women, or addresses the structural inequality from which they suffer.

titchy this research is heavily biased and I am sure you will find research biased towards your own viewpoint:

transascity.org/the-transgender-brain/

Down the Marlborough, a trans friendly women's pub, anyone pretending to be trans and threatening women would be kicked out immediately by both the women and the trans people. I don't know why anyone is questioning this.

Perfectly, I think the research you are referring to found that the transgender women studied had brains somewhere between those of the average woman and those of the average man. However, these were adult brains and it was noted that brains are plastic and it was impossible to know if this was innate or had emerged as a result of lived experience. This research was a small study, but sits perfectly well with the much bigger study that noted that there was no such thing as a male a female brain, but rather that our brains are all a mosaic. You can find elements that are more common in male or female brains, but looking at any given brain you cannot know whether it is from a woman or a man.

This is all from memory of reading the studies by the way, and I haven't gone back to look for them again, so apologies if my analysis is imperfect.

researchers in the fields have actually got it all right

Good! That's settled then. Just show us the research and we can all move on.

Although this doesn't actually square with your statement that:

At the end of the day nobody really knows

Which is it?

The Trans Research Review does not claim to be peer-reviewed scientific evidence that "some people have genuinely been born in the wrong body". In fact it says that many trans people see 'being born in the wrong body' as a problematic and inflexible medical dogma which thwarts access to reassignment.

Is anyone joining me down the Marlborough? Let's go somewhere else. Don't want to hear arguments against female-only spaces at the scene of a DV murder TBH. Invite your Marlborough friends to join us.

this research is heavily biased

Then it's not research is it? We want academic peer reviewed articles - they're research.

a trans friendly women's pub, anyone pretending to be trans and threatening women would be kicked out immediately by both the women and the trans people

Good. What if you're not in the Marlborough though? What if you're a lone female in a changing room? Or a female prisoner? Cos those pretending to be trans whilst being threatening are NOT thrown out. Oh that it was that easy.

Thehairthebod there has been a lot of research to suggest trans people have different brains than the rest of us

Yes, that research showed lots of similarities with people who suffer from anorexia.

I don't know of any conclusive studies which show that there are 'male' and 'female' brains past release of hormones or that these brains can 'end up in the wrong body'. Studies have shown that there are characteristics which are more prevalent in specific sexes, eg. That areas relating to spatial awareness show up more in male brains, but that this can happen in women's brains too and this does not mean that that woman's brain is 'male'. Nor does a male brains without a prevalence of these characteristics mean the brain is 'female'. But actually studies on trans people's brains suggest that they are most 'aligned' with the sex of the body they are in, and as I said one of the marked differences was that trans people's brains had most in common with the brains of people with anorexia.

That is how I understood it all anyway!

Still waiting for that answer...

Some biological males have genuinely been born into the wrong body and therefore identify as female.

And as for this piece of absolute claptrap, it's an ideological position not a scientific one. There is no robust science. The ideological foundation of the above can be summarized as a belief in ladybrains. This ideology is otherwise known as Patriarchy.

And you are surprised that feminists disagree with an ideology based on the idea that female oppression is the natural order because, ladybrain??

Gender dysphoria clearly exists. But identifying as female does not make one actually become female.

Perfectly wants 51% of the population to deny their own material reality and bodily existence in order to validate a male delusion and sexual fetish.

This isn't just misogyny, it's one of the most misogynistic ideas patriarchal society has ever come up with.

And because we currently live in a context of postmodernist, neo-liberal, identity politics this attack on the politics of class is being spun and marketed as being progressive. It is being promoted as being about individual freedoms when in fact it is about the destruction of class protections.

This is why I don't get 'gender fluid' people lumping themselves in with trans and present being 'non binary' as some kind of scientific, irrefutable facg. Surely all gender fluid means is that you don't conform to the gender stereotypes of society?

Like, does Travis Alabanza claim he is 'born in the wrong body?'

What body should you have been born into if you are 'non binary'? Surely they just prove the point that it's all socially constructed bollocks?

I too am very interested in all this research that proves that "some biological males are born in the wrong body" as it would directly conflict with all the current research that shows that there isn't any major differences between male and female brains.

And what does it mean to be "born in the wrong body?" Your body is built from from your genes (simplistically - there's a lot of steps involved). How can one be "born in the wrong body" when it's literally formed from one's chromosomes?

(And why is all this talk always focused on biological males "born in the wrong body?" Aren't trans men biological females "born in the wrong body" according to this logic?)

And this "born in the wrong body" stuff is total appropriation of the lives and experiences of transsexuals being used to promote something entirely different.

Many TIMs like their bodies. They like their penis and testicles. They like the look and feel of the trappings of femininity on their male bodies. They are not arguing that they were "born in the wrong body". They are arguing that their male bodies are female.

Near 1.5k posts in and theres still the bollocks about 'transpeople exist you know!!!!!' When still, none has said they do not exist. No proof of brain sex exists, though its definitely possible (and I think there is evidence for this too?) that sex dysphoria shows up on brain scans, much in the way that anorexia/BDD does.

This assertion of brain difference is scarily reminiscent of the eugenics ideology within white supremacist movements.

Exactly Bronwen.

Meanwhile, perfectly seems to think that this is a disagreement about who uses which toilets whilst having drinkypoos down the Marlborough (which used to be a lesbian bar but for some reason now has loads of men in it).

Still 1.5k posts and people refer to transgender as a male delusion, a sexual fetish, a mental illness, something that needs to be cured... exactly what people were saying about the gays 50 years ago.

As lesbian, how could I ever stand by this 'brand' of feminism? Why would I stand outside the Marlborough pub with placards demanding my transgender friends leave when women and transgender people are having a lovely time together inside?

The reason I am so invested in this issue is you propose to speak for all women, that opposing the GRA is for my own good. You can't see how harmful it can be to women to deny them their peaceful existence with their transgender friends.

Some biological males have genuinely been born into the wrong body and therefore identify as female.

Absolute NONSENSE. Some brain scan studies have shown some (small) aspects of trans-identified men have more similarities to the AVERAGE female brain than to the AVERAGE male brain. But these studies have failed to control for sexuality - similar studies have shown that gay men show similar AVERAGES.

Some men are 5ft tall - closer to the AVERAGE height for females than the AVERAGE height for males. Doesn't make them women.

Perfectly - every single cell in the human body - with the exception of red blood cells - is sexed. Every. Single. One. That includes brain cells.

Brains and bodies are not separate. The belief that they are is a religious one, called dualism. Science does not, has never, and will never "prove" that a brain lives in the wrong body.

Still 1.5k posts and people refer to transgender as a male delusion, a sexual fetish, a mental illness, something that needs to be cured... exactly what people were saying about the gays 50 years ago.
No-one has said this. And "the gays" is homophobic. Please don't use it.

You can't see how harmful it can be to women to deny them their peaceful existence with their transgender friends
How is the current legal situation denying women a peaceful existence with their transgender friends? What is a change in the law going to achieve?