“Transwomen are women”

[BertrandRussell]

I’ve tried this before-but please can someone explain the thinking behind this to me. I am naive enough to think that there must be some- is it the “male brain/female brain” thing? And where did it come from? Where did it start?

Please-no abuse from either “side”. Just statements of fact. With links to evidence if possible.

I’m not going to say it... you’re already thinking it...

""Those who can make youbelieve absurditiescan make youcommit atrocities."
Voltaire

I didn't say any man is stronger than any woman did I? If I did I shouldn't have. I was recalling from memory at first. Let me check

Thw quoted post at question was Even the weakest men can out grip the strongest women

Goebbels - Trump -

Those figures are quite scary, but if you think about it very obvious Barracker. I would consider myself to be pretty strong. I grew up with brothers and all their friends and had to stand up for myself. I remember as a child competing in arm-wrestling, but by the age of 14 every single one of them had overtaken me. I have never been beaten by a woman/girl (we didn't have smartphones and were very bored as children ), but yet even the youngest/smallest/weediest of my brothers, friends could beat me long before they were physically mature.

Thw quoted post at question was Even the weakest men can out grip the strongest women

And it's been corrected. The top strongest women can only outgrip the bottom quarter of men.

Slightly weird thing to quibble over if I'm honest.

I remember getting into an argument with a trans-ally on here and being struck by her position vis a vis physical vs. mental differences. Her view really seemed to be "admit to physical differences" = "whole edifice of feminism come crumbling down" while simultaneously "lady brains" = "cool explanation of transgender, like totes compatible with feminism". I just couldn't get my head round the cognitive dissonance involved in holding that position.

I can get the kid of any prickly jar using force or guile.

Pickle not prickly!

Maybe my next name change should be PricklyJar.

If you pick a pawpaw from a prickly jar...

I've already corrected myself, but kudos for pointing out one more time my rhetoric which generalised too much for your taste.

Even the weakest men (say, those somewhere near the bottom third of the untrained men bellcurve) can out grip the strongest women (say, those in the top third of the trained women bellcurve).

I didn't use singular. You can see the point still stands.

But I'll leave it there as I'm not sure niggling over the fact that almost every man can out grip almost every woman helps the thread. It's just something I remember in a situation where I might get grabbed by a man. That the odds are overwhelming that he will overpower me no matter who he is.

Really? It anyone could show a difference between male and female brains wouldn’t we be nearly there?
As I understand it you can see differences in how brains respond to stimuli by live imaging techniques. Female brains ‘light up’ in characteristic ways for example in terms of empathy and risk aversion. Interestingly, these responses can be modified by testosterone injections, for example in Female to male transition. I understand that these changes are more profound the earlier in life the hormones are taken

It's not controversial that men are stronger than women.

It's the entire basis for their means of oppression.

If we were stronger than them, they wouldn't be able to do it.

But the point was not all men are stronger than all women.
Very little oppression is based on physical strength now, it doesn't need to be.

Off topic, but opening jars depends more on jar lid size and hand size than brute force. DH can open big jars for me. I have tiny hands. He has big hands, so I can open small jars for him that he can't budge. All to do with grip size, physics or summat.......

But I digress...

What has really upset me about this thread is that there is even a discussion going on about the feasibility or otherwise of changing the definition of women legally. FFS that way lies madness. Can you imagine a similar discussion going on among men where they decide whether they can legally change the definition of man? It would be "fuck off sunshine".

I cling on to the hope to quote a famous saying (Lincoln?) "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

Very little oppression is based on physical strength now, it doesn't need to be.

I disagree. Domestic violence, 85,000 women a year raped, street harrassment. All based on actual violence or threats of actual violence.

As for the rest, it is all underpinned by superior strength.

Men don't actually have to enact violence for women to be afraid. We know they can. They remind us, all the time.

The madness continues (apologies if someone has already posted about this). Transmen are NOT going to be offered routine cervical smears and breast screening on the NHS (even though they could get these cancers) BUT Transwomen are going to be offered them routinely - fair enough for breast cancer but transwomen don't have a cervix so why???

Seems to be a lose out situation for Transmen.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/14/women-identify-men-not-offered-routine-nhs-breast-cancer-screening/

Yes, Datun. At the level of nation-on-nation conflict, having better missile delivery systems and more sophisticated drones for bombing the shit out of "insurgents" and the civilian caught in the cross fire without putting your troops at matter matters more. But at the level of individuals in domestic or everyday situations, physical strength - in the sense of muscular strength and leverage, not the ability to cope with the pain of childbirth (which is awesome, but won't help you in a fight) - is what means that men can beat the crap out of women if they choose to. And as you also point out, the threat is just as effective - which is why punching a hole in the door is domestic violence too because it's saying to the woman, clearly and unequivocally, "behave yourself or your face is next." And why the whole TRA thing of combined doxxing (we know where you live), rape threats, die in a fire threats is not mere hyperbole, but given the context of society wide male on female violence, counts as threats of real-world physical violence.

It is at best true that transwomen are women only in the minimal sense in which, for example, seahorses are horses. (Or along the same lines, it is true, if at all, only in the sense in which clothes horses or hobby-horses are horses ... or in which red herrings are herrings or Chicago 12-bar blues exhibit a colour of the rainbow. And so on.)

If this seems to trivialise the matter, that seems to me wholly appropriate. Those who claim 'transwomen are women' and then go on to attempt to annex rights for transgender people based on this claim deserve not debate so much as ridicule. This is all just silly, or would be were the consequences of such foolishness not so serious.

Some of you might be interested in this: Les Green on "'Presenting as' a man" (Les Green is Professor of Philosophy of Law at Oxford.)

• As Green says, it is tempting to make fun of someone claiming to 'present as ...' something-or-other (a woman, say, or a man in the case he addresses.) It may be worth noting, though, in addition, Green's pointing out the obvious (and, implicitly, risible) falsity of claims to the effect that 'presenting makes things so' ... particularly wrt proposed changes to GRA and Labour Party nonsense about 'self-defining women' and so on. (Green himself doesn't make the connections, but I suspect him not to be an habitué of MN.) Absurdity is not a good basis for law -- or for political organisation.

Absurdity is not a good basis for law -- or for political organisation.

Should be our rallying cry in fighting this shit. Seriously, politicians and everyone else who wants to rearrange society around this absurdity needs to be forced to examine the logic of what they endorsing.

9toenails

Exactly. I've read a fairly good analysis, location of which I can't remember.

But it basically said that inferring something about someone does not, in material reality, determine what they are.

From the link above 'presenting as a man'

Part of what it is to be a man, in our culture, is to not affirm or imply that manhood is achieved solely by or in presentation.

The person who wrote this is obviously a great big stinking transphobe.

It’s not just transmen potentially risking their health:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3758950/
Apologies for not creating a hyperlink - it’s been a while since I’ve posted.
I wonder, however, whether these potentially serious health risks might help turn the tide so that trans people can access health care appropriate to their biological health needs and knock this “I’m a real boy/girl” nonsense on the head.

They aren't women. Biologically they aren't. Plenty of science to prove that. Just my two sense.

BUT Transwomen are going to be offered them routinely - fair enough for breast cancer but transwomen don't have a cervix so why???

I'll open the book right now on whether some poor female HCP will end up having to go through the pantomime of a pretend cervical smear test purely to gratify someone's ego.