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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

Original poster

“Transwomen are women”

599 replies

BertrandRussell · 27/12/2017 09:33

There are plenty of angsty threads on this topic, but please can this one not be.

Please can someone who thinks that transwomen are actually, literally women tell me the reasoning behind the thought? If you have come to this conclusion because you have read scientific research, please could you link to it.

I will only respond with “Thank you” or to give you clarification if you ask for it,and please will anyone else interested do the same.

OP posts:
Original poster
BertrandRussell · 27/12/2017 16:19

“But how do the women with male bodies know they are women then? Please can someone answer this question.”

I would like that too. All the answers I have ever heard seem to focus on gender stereotypes. Which is frustrating.

OP posts:
Elendon · 27/12/2017 16:22

Go look bible basher's up online Glitched You know exactly what it means but you are so happy to waste people's time and energy. A sucker of life.

Tuna Perhaps you should have been more clear in your response then. Either way. Criticism stands. Clearly!

Glitched · 27/12/2017 16:23

@Bertrand

Their mind. Unfortunately their isn't a trans Turing Test.

Elendon · 27/12/2017 16:24

Their mind

Are you the thought police Glitched

Glitched · 27/12/2017 16:24

I know what a bible basher is. Don't see how I am like one.

Happy to talk about the subject. Not going to be insulted though. I'm not going to engage with you anymore.

Elendon · 27/12/2017 16:34

You actually haven't engaged with me so it's no loss. But you are on a public forum and therefore are opening yourself up to scrutiny.

Get over it.

I see you refused to answer the question regarding biological women who find themselves captured by, for example, IS. Handy that. Ignore biology when it matters.

Ereshkigal · 27/12/2017 16:35

You must see that expecting a philosophical position to trump objective fact is a faith based position, and imposed on others it becomes evangelical and oppressive though?

Elendon · 27/12/2017 16:36

And it's not a 'subject'. It's a lived experience. Real and visceral. Like blood, birth, sex and violence.

Ereshkigal · 27/12/2017 16:39

You appear to just want to come in and play how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. No, I don't think that's going to fly.

Original poster
BertrandRussell · 27/12/2017 16:41

OK. So have we established that there is nothing actually biological happening when a trans person feels like a woman? There is nothing that can be measured or tested or proved?

If that is so, why does anyone have to accept that, and accept that society has to change to accommodate that person’s feeling? I’m not saying society shouldn’t change to accommodate. But why are questions “not allowed”?

OP posts:
Glitched · 27/12/2017 16:43

I was just answering the OP and follow up questions. I'm not a trans activist. I don't support the erosion of women's rights or spaces.

I do however personally think that trans women are women based on my own philosophical position. I am not imposing that on anyone.

PencilsInSpace · 27/12/2017 16:45

I don't think trans people are pretending, I think they genuinely do feel like their body is wrong. However I don't think that means their body is actually wrong. And I don't think the rest of us should be forced into taking on a new definition of ourselves to suit their issues.

Yes to this.

Glitched, you said earlier in the thread that you are an atheist. There are many many people with a very strong, unshakeable belief that god exists. This is their genuinely held belief, they are not pretending. Their minds tell them that god exists.

It's OK to be atheist though isn't it? We are not required to share a belief in god, or pretend we do, no matter how deeply held this belief is for others. We are simply required to respect the rights of others to hold and express their own belief in god.

Why then do we have to 'recognise' that some men are actually women purely because they believe themselves to be?

Ereshkigal · 27/12/2017 16:48

I do however personally think that trans women are women based on my own philosophical position. I am not imposing that on anyone.

Fair enough. I don't find it convincing having spoken to many transactivists online. You might like to read the link I posted earlier with posts from trans support forums on Reddit etc where MTF trans people describe their feelings. Many of those males are clearly fetishists or basing it on stereotypes of what they associate with womanhood and women.

Halebeke425 · 27/12/2017 16:52

'Their mind' is not an answer.

What if in my mind I am a cat? Or a penguin? Are you seriously saying that people can just identify as whatever they want because they think they are, regardless that they may have mental health problems or other unhealthy reasons for thinking such a thing? So you cannot actually define a woman then, other than someone that 'feels like they are' without any definition of what that means? And biology has nothing to do with it?

All this belief and no reasoning, sounds like a cult.

Beachcomber · 27/12/2017 16:52

I don't think anyone is entitled to have their internal sense of self validated by others.

Totally agree with you GuardianLions. That's it really. I respect the right of others to have a belief in an inner sense of self / a soul / a faith based notion of a spiritual existence.

I do not believe they have the right to impose the above on others or expect others to validate the above.

Your Hefner example nails it. The ideology which insists that TIMs are women comes from the same place. Just like porn and prostitution and all the rest of it. Men demanding that women play a dangerous and harmful game of "let's pretend" in order to validate men's feelings (and often their grubby anti-woman sexual fantasies).

And not only do the women have to play let's pretend men are whatever they say they are but we have to pretend that women are whatever men say we are too.

It makes me sick. It's misogyny on steroids and yet people argue it's progressive.

Glitched · 27/12/2017 16:53

@pencils

Good question. I don't know. I guess because trans is linked to LGBT and it's wrong to be critical of LGB so people include the T too.

Glitched · 27/12/2017 16:55

@hale

Humans can be either male or female. It's conceivable that a mind and body could get mixed up somewhere in the wiring.

A human cannot be a penguin or a tree.

SuburbanRhonda · 27/12/2017 16:59

Humans can be either male or female. It's conceivable that a mind and body could get mixed up somewhere in the wiring.

Lots of things are conceivable to someone with a vivid imagination.

BelaLugosisShed · 27/12/2017 17:08

There are documented cases of Dementia patients, who had SRS many years ago, now being extremely distressed at their altered bodies because their brain now doesn't recognise them, how's that for debunking the 'born in the wrong body' myth ?
I'm sure I've read research that states SSRIs can alleviate gender dysphoria, which would strongly indicate a Chemical imbalance in the brain.

Elendon · 27/12/2017 17:09

LGB stands for sexuality and this is wrong for some because it goes against the norms for society as in everyone should be heterosexual. It doesn't mean the erosion of heterosexuality though. Far from it.

The T stands for trans. It has nothing to do with sexuality but all to do with going against the norms of society. Hence the inclusion.

But I'm damned if this inclusion of T is to the exclusion of women as a class. Fuck that shit.

wherethevioletsgrow · 27/12/2017 17:10

Sigh. Bertrand, whether you like it or not, it is possible to obtain a gender recognition certificate in order to legally change gender. No, of course you cannot change chromosomes. You are about 15 years out of date on this debate. If you want to debate the rights and wrongs of de-medicalising the process I am all ears, but as it stands, transwomen are legally recognised as women and I agree with the law as it currently stands.

Beachcomber · 27/12/2017 17:17

@purpleanorak - I haven't read that book. It sounds interesting.

When I talk about women no longer being oppressed for being female I'm not imagining a world in which women no longer carry and birth babies. I'm imagining a world in which men don't hate, abuse, control and exploit women for our reproductive capacity. One can but dream...

And until that world exists the trans ideological claim that women's female biology isn't what makes them women is frankly akin to holocaust denial.

ATeardropExplodes · 27/12/2017 17:19

Sigh. Bertrand, whether you like it or not, it is possible to obtain a gender recognition certificate in order to legally change gender. No, of course you cannot change chromosomes. You are about 15 years out of date on this debate. If you want to debate the rights and wrongs of de-medicalising the process I am all ears, but as it stands, transwomen are legally recognised as women and I agree with the law as it currently stands

Problem is the law is due to change hence trying to work out the logistics of it all.

Lovesagin · 27/12/2017 17:19

No such thing as the wrong body. You can decide you don't like yours and change its appearance, bit like how I dye my hair, but a trans woman will always be biologically make and my hair will always really be mousey brown and my ds will always be a human no matter how many times he walks on all fours and barks.

You wouldn't agree with an anorexic that they were fat, I will not agree that a man is a woman.

Lancelottie · 27/12/2017 17:21

Bertrand, to go back to your OP, I’m trying to articulate a thought here.
I’ve heard several people say variations on ‘Well, how would you feel if you suddenly woke up in a different body, as a man, when you knew you were a woman? It’s like that.’
I don’t buy that, as it happens, because everyone’s sense of sense presumably evolves gradually with their experiences.
But I get something of the ‘wrong body’ sensation if I try to get dolled up for an occasion - lipstick, make up, skirts, heels, whatever. Even if I can objectively see in a mirror that the effect is acceptable for ‘human female on party night’, I feel more than just wrong and uncomfortable, it’s almost a physical revulsion at the image, even if I’d think nothing of it on a friend.
I’m wondering if that feeling of ‘but that’s just not me’, multiplied many fold, is what hits a trans person when they look in a mirror.