“Transwomen are women”

[BertrandRussell]

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.

But what is 'being treated as a woman' and 'living as a woman'?

Hard to pinpoint, but if I woke up tomorrow with male genetalia and a male body but my own brain, I would be extremely distressed and I would feel like I was born in the wrong body. People would assume I was a man, would address me using male pronouns, but on the inside I would feel female and there would be a disconnect between how I felt and how I looked. If men and women should be treated the same, then according to that logic, it should not matter to me what body I have. Yet it does. Deeply so.

It's not some radical concept- psychiatrists and other medical professionals recognise gender dysphoria, which is treated by allowing the patient to live as the gender with which they identify.

The GRA is largely obsolete now. We have equal marriage and in a few years we'll have equal pension age. All documents except birth certificate can be changed without a GRC. Most trans people don't bother applying.

I haven't seen anyone saying trans people should not be acknowledged, can you link please?

What new gender is this though?

If I was born female but identified as male and got a GRC, my new gender would be male. But I am sure you knew that .

Ah the old new gender thing.

Of course I new that It's nothing new. Just switch of the same old, same old. But of course you knew that

I haven't seen anyone saying trans people should not be acknowledged, can you link please?

One example:

poster ATeardropExplodes Wed 27-Dec-17 17:31:34
(My original post) If your position is that someone with XY chromosomes is always a man and refuse to acknowledge that they wish to live as a woman, then that is very harsh towards those with genuine gender dysphoria

(response from ATeardrop) Life is harsh! And mainly more towards women than men.

But waking up tomorrow with a different set of genitals and physical appearance isn’t something which ever happens. You can’t use that as any basis for conclusions about why should happen in the real world. In the real world, your sex is defined by your chromosomes. The rest - gendered expectations about how people with certain chromosomes should look and behave - is invented rubbish. I have no sense of internal gender any more than I have an internal sense of myself as a unicorn. It’s all made up.

Hard to pinpoint, but if I woke up tomorrow with male genetalia and a male body but my own brain, I would be extremely distressed and I would feel like I was born in the wrong body. People would assume I was a man, would address me using male pronouns, but on the inside I would feel female and there would be a disconnect between how I felt and how I looked. If men and women should be treated the same, then according to that logic, it should not matter to me what body I have. Yet it does. Deeply so.

Can you be more patronising? I don't think you've gone DEEP ENOUGH sweetie.

Violets. If anyone woke up suddenly feeling like they were in the wrong body, after years of not feeling this way, a typically functioning person would ask ‘what is wrong with me?’, ‘what has caused this sudden shift?’.
Mental health practitioners view gender dysphoria as a medical condition and the rejection of a healthy body something to try and reconcile without invasive treatment, not something functional.
Being gender non conforming is, however, not considered dysfunctional if it doesn’t involve dysphoria or rejection of ones sexed body.

I have an issue with womens rights being removed by a new type of trans activist, or by trans people being given a new right. Or by men being allowed to self declare as women.
I'm a feminist, so the removal of womens rights to boundaries, self determination, women only spaces and services is concerning to me.

Women can explain how we are classed as women, and why various women need women only spaces and services.
The thread has reached 7 pages and no one can demonstrate how trans women are women.

The rest - gendered expectations about how people with certain chromosomes should look and behave - is invented rubbish. I have no sense of internal gender any more than I have an internal sense of myself as a unicorn. It’s all made up

Yes, I agree! It is a social construct. But that doesn't make it any less of a 'real experience'. Nearly everything we experience is at least partly socially constructed. However, unless we stop to question it, it feels inherent and natural to us. The fact that gender is a construct does not prevent the very real distress felt by those with gender dysphoria.

XmasRat you missed the bit where the previous poster questioned whether she could claim to have always been Nigerian. We are being asked to believe that transwomen have always been women, always been female.

If, on the other hand, you define 'woman' as a social role, a construct with elements of socialised behaviour, societal role, style of interaction, visual presentation, personal identity etc, then of course someone can become a woman.

This definition would mean I am not a woman.

Elendon I don't know why you are being rude to me. People with gender dysphoria experience being trapped in the wrong body. People are saying there is no such feeling but that is easy to say if you have never felt like that yourself.

But there are people on this or other threads who do not think trans people should be acknowledged at all and should always be treated as and referred to according to their birth-sex and that we should revert to the pre-2004 position. That is what I have an issue with.

I think I may be one of the people you are thinking of.

I do not think that you should be able to legally change sex - because you can't change sex - but that does not mean I 'do not think trans people should be acknowledged at all'.

I believe trans people should be acknowledged and there should be protections in place against discrimination and abuse - but I don't believe a GRC is the way to do that.

A piece of paper will not stop abuse or discrimination. More acceptance of gender non-conforming people will, but that won't happen by pretending that gender non-conforming people are actually the opposite sex.

It will only happen by people accepting that some men wear make up and like ballet and baking and spending time with their children and that that's ok. The social definition of man and woman does need to change but not by saying that people have got the wrong bodies for their identities but for them to be accepted for whatever identity they have in whatever body they have.

Mental health practitioners view gender dysphoria as a medical condition and the rejection of a healthy body something to try and reconcile without invasive treatment, not something functional

But why then do they prescribe hormones, surgery and sign off on a gender recognition certificate? Treatment for gender dysphoria often involves living as the identified gender.

Violet. With young people, the medical approach is ‘watchful waiting’ and less then 20% of young patients go on to receive invasive treatment.
I have never met a transsexual who has felt that invasive treatment has been offered readily. A staged approach to treatment is taken to test see how well patients can do with ‘less’.
The fact that we are talking about ‘patients’, ‘treatment’ and ‘dysphoria’ clearly points to something that is not functional

Teardrop didn't say trans people should not be acknowledged! She said life is harsh and moreso for women. This was in response to a post saying that to hold a certain position would be 'harsh' - i.e. 'don't be mean' / 'can't you just be kind' and all the other variations of appealing to women's socialised niceness in the absence of logic.

I don't believe anybody here refuses to acknowledge that there are some men with gender dysphoria who wish to 'live as a woman'.

I think quite a few of us believe that someone with XY chromosomes is always male though. Harsh but true.

People are saying there is no such feeling

No they're not.

There is a perfectly good definition of 'woman': a woman is an adult human female, where female defined as being a member of the reproductive class that produces ova and bears live young. (NOTE: this definition is based on radical capacities, and not exercisable or exercised abilities, hence any woman who does not or no longer produces ova or is not or is no longer capable of bearing live young is still a woman due to radical capacities.)

If this definition is to be replaced by something else, a solid argument has to be made for doing this. The replacement definition must be shown to have greater explanatory power and to more accurately describe reality.

Any definition of 'woman' must satisfy the following criteria:

1. It must apply equally and in the same way to all women, ie to both 'ciswomen' (shoot me now) and transwomen.
2. It cannot use the same term on both sides. Therefore: a woman is someone who feels like a woman is not good, as the term 'woman' is used on both sides as the word to be defined and as part of the definition. This is like saying: an apple is something that looks like an apple. Meaningless. It imparts no knowledge.
3. The definition must be able to be used predictively: if faced with an individual, am I able to use it with a degree of confidence to tell whether this individual is a woman or not? Is its predictive use consistent across individuals (i.e. possible women); between observers (i.e. of the same possible woman) and across time?
4. Humans are a sexually dimporphic species that reproduces sexually. The sole point of sex is reproduction. Any new definition of woman must therefore permit a coherent and accurate account of sexual reproduction. Moreover, this must be continuous with accounts in other sexually dimorphic species that reproduce sexually. Any new definition of woman must enable the roles of any individual man and woman in sexual reproduction to be predicted.

I have repeatedly been asked for such a definition. None has ever been forthcoming. Instead I am shouted down for being hateful, bigoted and vile. Why is it that no one is ever able to provide me with a satisfactory definition?

As an aside about reproduction: if we are to accept that transwomen are truly women and transmen are truly men then the account of reproduction we end up with is as follows:
Sexual reproduction in humans occurs when a woman mates with a man, or a man mates with a man, or a woman mates with a woman. Either the man or the woman may produce ova. Either the man or the woman may produce sperm. Either the man or the woman may conceive, gestate and give birth. Really??? Is that really adequate?? Is that really progress??? It is nonsensical and makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

LassWiTheDelicateAir - that's totally your right. Personally, I would be miffed, however, if you were to tell me my husband was not Scottish and never could be Scottish because of the colour of his skin because only white people can be Scottish. Which I think is why some people find it unpleasant if you tell trans women that they cannot be women because your definition is not the same as theirs.

PencilsInSpace - which I think is the core of the disagreement. People are defining "woman" in different ways.

Mild tangent - I thought this post was about seeking understanding not an argument? Sorry if I misunderstood.

I have repeated ASKED for such a definition not BEEN asked....

It does people with gender dysphoria absolutely no favours to lie to them and to tell them that they either ARE the sex they feel they would be better off being, or that they are able to BECOME a member of that sex. They cannot. And it is not an act of compassion to pretend that they can. Severe and intractable cases, WHERE ALL OTHER ATTEMPTS AT HELPING THEM LIVE IN THEIR BODY WITHOUT DISTRESS have failed, may indeed be best treated by enabling the individual to mimic the opposite sex. But it is mimicry - mimicry as best therapuetic intervention for that individual perhaps - nevertheless.
But that is what is missing. The complete absence of any attempt to assist the dysphoric individual to live without distress in the body that they have. Indeed, such attempts are seen as bigoted and hateful.

okay, although under the 2004 act, the person is issued with a new birth certificate, erasing any record of the birth-sex...

Ok I am one of the terrible bigots you refer to. Because I don't think this should happen. You are male, changing your birth certificate is a lie. It creates all kind of problems. That doesn't mean I think it should be legal to discriminate against trans people.

Ereshkigal agreed. It is telling the lie that a girl was born, when a boy was born.

I am older than many people on here- I can remember asking my parents about Jan Morris because I heard something about her on the radio. We also had a family friend who went to Tunisia (I think) for surgery. There have always been transsexuals, and people “living as women” The current discussion feels different somehow. Which, to be frank, would make a lot of today’s issues just go away!

The current discussion feels different somehow. Which, to be frank, would make a lot of today’s issues just go away!

How so Bert?