Why DO people 'believe' transwomen are women?

[AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth]

Actually why?

Because the act of 'believing' without evidence or logic is cult like ideology to me.

The repetition of 'transwomen ARE women' on twitter, facebook etc is like a mantra of a cult. Like repeating the rosary or something, and the more that it repeated, the more people double down in their thinking.

I really feel bewildered half the time now.

It feels like a cult

Like a cult or religion, I guess people are free to believe what they want.

But we are not forced to believe other people's religious beliefs; why are we being forced to believe that 'transwomen are women' and 'transmen are men', when there is no objective, material truth in that statement

It's the new Reformation, but logical thinkers, not Catholics, are being hounded out and targetted.

It's mind blowing

I am my body and my body is me. The brain is part of the body. I don't believe in souls.

I don't think most people do actually believe it - not really, deep down.

They are mostly polite (like the use of preferred personal pronouns)

They haven't given it much thought, but have heard "transwomen are women" said so often that it sticks and is therefore repeated

They think of young TIM and go all protective and maternal, seeking to defend them from nasty people saying things that make the TIM feel sad (even if it's the truth)

They think of TIM as an extension of the fabulous gay friend they go clubbing with - they say "go sister!" to them, so why not the man who apparently desperately wants to be a woman?

I think it's a combination of people being polite and not really believing it, and people not realising that most TIM's still have their dicks and equating no penis with woman.

If I'd had a different body I'd have had different life experiences and as a result would be a different person. Any way you spin this you can't get away from the body mattering.

If you asked me for a list of things that make me a woman, my body would be the only thing on the list

YY. Woman is very simple. Adult female human.

What is feminine is much trickier. What is is to be a woman is much trickier.

Words have set meanings for a reason. A transwoman with a penis who is capable of raping other women is a man.

It's faulty syllogism. Just because you call a man a woman, it doesn't make them a woman.

If you ask me for a list of things that make me a woman my body would be last on the list.

So just give me, say, the top five things on your list that makes a woman but isn't about your body.

What are ‘womanly elements’, if we’re not talking about chromosomes and bodies?

Because that’s where the whole argument falls down.

Am I less of a woman because I don’t perform much in the way of femininity? Of course not. So why does a man performing femininity become a woman? It’s nonsense.

Eggs - if it is not your body - what is it that makes you a woman ?,decades of lived experience as a girl/woman?

I am trying to take this discussion seriously but I am chuckling at "womanly elements". What would those be? Nice nails maybe? Swishy hair? Ability to empathise? Good at cleaning the skirting boards?

See, I'm thinking elements as in nature and going, water then? And men are, I dunno, fire because manly men love BBQs?

@iamawoman Wiki definition of doxxing here

It's the collection and use of information posted online to identify otherwise anonymous posters.

TRAs have been known to publish the details of so-called terfs and allowed the details to be used in harassment campaigns incorporating employers, a person's clients and family members.

Filling personal and work Twitter feeds and Facebook timelines faster than the victim (or their employer) can block with abusive posts is one tactic.

I went straight to pandora bracelet with the mention of elements

Which is now worrying me

More from 1984...

'On the contrary,' [O’Brien] said, 'you have not controlled it. That is what has brought you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.'

He paused for a few moments, as though to allow what he had been saying to sink in.

'Do you remember,' he went on, 'writing in your diary, "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four"?'

'Yes,' said Winston.

O'Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.

'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?'

I wonder if EggsonHeads now actually having been asked to think about it, is struggling to compile a list.

I've got a FGF (fabulous gay friend) and believe me, that fella knows where the bodies are buried. He's as gender critical as I am, god love him.

Nobody actually thinks TIM are women. Nobody expects them to make the tea or wipe their mother in laws bum. Nor do any straight men want to have sex with them.

And I dare say that even the most blue haired unicorn girl at Brighton Institute of Madeyuppey doesn't actually want to be naked in front of the ones she doesn't personally know, especially if the TIMs in question are her fathers age.

Its transubstantiation.

At the moment of the bell ringing in the mass, the bread wafer and wine are turned by the priest into the actual, literal body and blood of Christ.

It's been argued over for centuries, whether it's just symbolic or whether through divine intervention this bread wafer changes to something else even though you can't see any change in its material reality. Most Catholics for centuries haven't believed it but said they do, and many people have been burned alive for not going along with it. It's the belief no one believes. No one would dream now of making that a legal compulsion under threat and make you chant the mantra of belief.

Here is a biological man. Everyone, from his mother and midwife to his doctor and people he passes in the street knows he is a biological man. However at the moment of his internal choice of identity happened there was transubstantiation and although there is no change in actual material reality he is now a woman.

No. It's a symbolic change, everyone knows this, it was perfectly ok to be polite and go along with this, but that politeness has been exploited to the point where it is damaging many others in its path for no good reason and it can no longer be indulged.

And I dare say that even the most blue haired unicorn girl at Brighton Institute of Madeyuppey doesn't actually want to be naked in front of the ones she doesn't personally know, especially if the TIMs in question are her fathers age.

Trudat.

No one actually believes it though, they are just humouring, it's quite sad when you think about it.

NC for the new thread.

I said the rosary on this one for years.

I can explain why I used to think it:

Like eggs I thought that defining womanhood as female biology was reductive. That there are many women who don't have uteruses / periods / ovaries / breasts and yet are still women. What do women have in common, other than being perceived as / treated as women? So if the unifying factor is "perceived as a woman" then that would include transwomen. Especially those whom I know, who "pass" and experience the same misogyny as other women. When they're being offered a job paying less than a man, or asked to make the coffee, it's not because of their chromosomes but because of social perception of them as women.

On that basis I was quite prepared to accept that trans women are women. I didn't think that they had literally changed into people with female chromosomes but that for everyday purposes they were fighting the same fight and living the same life as other women. They were part of my team.

That was particularly since I matured politically in the age of identity politics where we were encouraged to look critically at our differing experiences as women rather than collective ones. "When can you comment on an issue? When you have lived experience of it" was another part of the same catechism.

What changed my outlook was the redefinition of "transgender" to mean not just transsexual but anybody who doesn't identify with the social stereotypes associated with their sex. Well, that includes me as a GNC woman - am I now transgender? Apparently so. And then it included a whole lot of people who have no intention of being perceived as a woman (and old fuddy-duddy me! how terribly BINARY of me to think it!) but still want the crumbs of advantage we can collect which are meant to protect those of us who DO experience life as women from those who don't.

And then I thought "fuck that."

Am I less of a woman because I don’t perform much in the way of femininity? Of course not. So why does a man performing femininity become a woman? It’s nonsense.

Perfectly put! They’re men performing femininity. They are NOT women, however much they want to be & however many people say they are.

That's spot on Wiggy - I remember that feeling (not about trans issues, which weren't headline news back when I were a nipper, but about biology) when I was a young lib fem in my twenties. I think the fear of biological determinism is at the root of it.

It's about understanding the difference between the material conditions underlying a certain set of disadvantages, on the one hand, and the belief that biology deterministically causes those disadvantages, on the other hand.

I looked at rad fems saying "biology matters and immediately (and mistakenly) heard "oh fuck, another set of people telling me how I ought to be based on my biology."

What of course I ought to have heard was this: Where does your oppression come from? What's at the root of it? What's the "means, motive and opportunity" for the crime of oppressing women. And the answer is:
Means = on average physically weaker hence vulnerable to physical threat (particularly when pregnant or lactating)
Motive = taking control of women's reproductive capacity to ensure that your male genetic material (which you can't gestate and turn into offspring by yourself) gets continued.
Opportunity = the whole patriarchal system created by the threat of male violence.

What I didn't see was that identifying "means, motive, opportunity" is very very different from saying the crime is inevitable, or isn't a crime at all because it's the state of nature. Those false conclusions are biological determinism, identifying means, motive, opportunity is simply identifying the way the world is.

EggsonHeads wrote - "womanly elements".

I hope you don't mean the womanly elements from ancient Greek culture: earth and water.

This 'passing as a woman' thing bothers me.

Partly because I can easily understand how people buy into it.

Whilst at the exactly same time, knowing that it, quite clearly, doesn't seem to actually work that way.

First of all, you would have to take the vanishingly small number of men who do actually pass. Consistently.

They would then also have to never mention that they are trans. Not an omission that appears to characterise the ideology.

They would then, if they were disadvantaged in any way by being perceived as a woman, have to deliberately keep their biological sex to themself, even though it disadvantaged them. (Knowing they were being passed over for promotion because they were childbearing age, for instance).

They can, at any point, opt out of passing. Opt out of oppression. In the blink of an eye. An advantage not extended to women.

And even then, they would not have the disadvantage of getting pregnant, not getting pregnant, contraception, menstruation, gestation, menopause, etc.

So claiming that men passing as women experience similar disadvantages to women, is only looking at things in a very superficial way.

Plus relies on someone being determined to be complicit in their own disadvantage.

And, from what I can tell, applies to a minuscule percentage, because, certainly most women, have a finely tuned radar when recognising men.