Can you all just lay off trans people

[cjferg]

There is a difference between sex and gender. Some people's align, other people's don't. Some people are biologically female, and their gender doesn't match that and vies versa. Some people don't have a gender. Why do you care so much?

One of my best friends in school was biologically a female. When he 'came out' to me as trans and explained how he had never felt comfortable in his body all I thought (and anyone who knew him) was that I wasn't surprised and that it made a lot of sense and we all got on with our lives. This was about age 17 and he said he had known this since he was a kid (not saying that any kid who says they want to should be able to willy nilly block their hormones, etc, btw)
It wasn't just about 'presenting as a male'. He was actually a male in a female body.
Yes, when he started presenting as male he felt a lot better. I remember he didn't want to go to our prom because of all the dressing up, etc. until we suggested he wear a tux, and it was amazing to see him so comfortable.
But still he hated having tits and having to wear a binder (can be done safely if you get a proper binder and don't just use bandages or w/e so don't even start)
It wasn't enough to just stuff the front of the trousers.
I repeat, he was a man trapped in a woman's body. Not just a cross dressing woman, not just in an experimental phase.

I have another friend who is biologically a female but they don't have a gender. They are known as 'they' not 'he'or 'she' and knowing them you would in no way think that they are either male or female, again not just about looking a certain way.

I also see a lot of people on here ranting about trans people and they literally only care about transwomen. Genuinely, what has happend to you that you feel so threatened at the thought of someone with a penis being the same gender as you?

Stop ranting about how men are going to use it as an excuse to perv on your kid in a changing room. I'd bet quite a lot that more women will perv on your kid in a changing room than men pretending to be trans will.

Gender is evolving all the time there are no definitive rules to being a man or a woman.

For every thing that you think being a woman is, there will be a woman who disagrees with you.
You say that being a woman means having a uterus - does that make people who've had theirs removed for medical reasons not women?

If being a woman means the ability to have babies then does that mean infertile women aren't women?

If you think being a man is the ability to grow facial hair does that mean that men who can't aren't men?

I read about a woman who had poly cystic ovaries and had a luxurious, thick beard and moustache as a result. Does that mean she is a man or less of a woman? Or should she have continued to try and shave and wax it off and be ashamed of it rather than accept herself the way she was and rock the beard?

Seriously, we've come a long way from being a woman meaning you're your husband's property and having to squirt out babies and clean your whole life. Why are you so determined to go backwards?

Stop using the teeny possibility of a man pretending to be trans to invade women's spaces as a vehicle for your hatred and open your mind enough to at least try and understand the issue, because it might be your kid. It might be your dad. It might be your bff 4eva. If that were the case would you ostracise them from your life and declare them a fraud, or have a little empathy and try and support them through something potentially life changing.

drops mic

RatRolyPoly

It really is that simple.

Either gender identity is one's soul, in which case it is a religious belief and should not be legislated for unless you are arguing for a theocracy.

Or it is one's personality, in which case the UK has 65 million of them which cannot be realistically legislated for.

That's all dualism is/isn't.

Sex, on the other hand, is a clearly demarcated material reality around which sound laws can be written where necessary.

What an absolutely brilliant thread! It has a bit of everything: comedy, pathos, philosophy, drama... Top marks everyone!

As you were

Whilst I could (and happily would!) debate your earlier points all day I will skip straight to the following so as to avoid confusing the matter...

You could have saved a lot of time by simply saying 'I believe in gender as an internal mental reality' and not trying to bounce off this article at all.

Undoubtedly this article is not the best place to start, but it's the place i started to realise the difference between the majority position on these boards and my own. Hence my using it; it's certainly past any usefulness now though, I agree.

Personally I don't believe in gender in that sense. I don't experience it myself and have never heard a convincing description that didn't rely on gender stereotypes or reference the physical sexed body. I'm happy to accept that other people might experience an internal sense of gender in some indescribable way, just as some people have a deep sense that god exists.

This seems to me to be the problem; if your sex, your innate gender and the social expectations of you all align you probably wouldn't notice anything at all! If you don't subscribe to gender expectations, you probably notice that, but if your sex and gender align you probably won't have cause to remark upon your innate gender.

But as with all of these things I'm not prepared to write-off the hundreds of thousands of people who are saying it is real. I believe that, if nothing else, it is real for them and whilst they should not impose their reality on me I should not impose my reality on them. It's a question of tolerance; much like you say about religion. You have to allow people as best you can to live in such a way as reflects their reality; you can't force everyone to be religious but you can't ban religion!

It's not reasonable though to insist that everybody else believes in it too, or to base laws around something so subjective.

You have to base laws around people's human rights - not to the excision of the human rights of others, of course, but there has to be compromise. You can't just say "transwomen are men, you get nothing".

FWIW I don't think the GRA strikes the right balance, although I'm not saying I know what "the right balance" is.

Gotta make tea Lang, will be back

Don't worry about responding to me, Rat. You can have a religious belief in the soul if you like. I'm not stopping you. You can use that religious belief to convince you that gender identity is real if you like and thus believe that transwomen are women if you like.

I can not believe if I like and I do like. I do not believe.

Neither of us can prove it because dualism is the religious belief or atheist disbelief in the human soul.

What does matter is not which of us is correct. What does matter is that the UK is not a theocracy and we do not legislate for religious belief.

You can't just say "transwomen are men, you get nothing".

No one is saying that.
We are saying make 3 spaces and services but you dont like that solution for some reason.

This seems to me to be the problem; if your sex, your innate gender and the social expectations of you all align you probably wouldn't notice anything at all!

Is there anyone for whom this is true? I think it is not likely.
Mainly because the social expectations of women are unrealistic and impossible to comply with at all times.

The fundamental right that transgender ideology wants to claim is the right to claim

"I am like THEM".

Where THEY are DENIED the right to prove this claim false.

Gender can only exist if you forcibly impose it on OTHERS and deny them the right to refute it.

This isn't an ideology of self expression.
It's an ideology of labelling and controlling OTHERS.
Women are the others.
Men are doing the labelling.
Against all evidence they are categorising OTHERS in a way that denies reality.

Who is the hardest backlash falling upon?
Women who say they don't have this gender.
Why would we be the prime target? Why target 'terfs' if we are relatively powerless, unrepresentative, not in any way a physical threat?

Because it is our idea that presents the threat. The idea that women don't really have gender, that it isn't real. It is the idea they are scared might spread.

Transgenderism ceases to exist if women are allowed to reject that THEY possess an internal gender type. This isn't about transgender people. They are just the pawns with which a different aim can be achieved. This is about controlling women.

I think it always has been.

This seems to me to be the problem; if your sex, your innate gender and the social expectations of you all align you probably wouldn't notice anything at all! If you don't subscribe to gender expectations, you probably notice that, but if your sex and gender align you probably won't have cause to remark upon your innate gender.

Do you experience gender as an internal mental reality, Rat? Can you say how you know you're a woman without reference to socially constructed gender or to your physical body?

It seems like you are extrapolating wildly from a sense a tiny number of people have that their body is 'wrong', and concluding that the rest of us must all therefore have a sense of gender that aligns with our sex. I'm not buying it. I think it's far more likely that gender dysphoria is a type of mental distress characterised by a strong but mistaken belief at odds with material reality. A bit like anorexia or BIID.

you can't force everyone to be religious but you can't ban religion!

What's happening at the moment is exactly like forcing everyone to be religious.

You have to base laws around people's human rights - not to the excision of the human rights of others, of course, but there has to be compromise. You can't just say "transwomen are men, you get nothing".

What human rights don't trans people have? What do you mean by 'compromise'? That usually means give and take on both sides. What's actually happening is one side doing all the taking and the other being expected to suck it up.

Transwomen ARE men and to assert that we are not allowed to say that is an excellent example of the point above. God does not exist. Transwomen are men. Only one of these statements will get me in trouble these days.

Transwomen being men doesn't mean they 'get nothing', they get exactly the same rights as any other men. If this doesn't suit them then they need to come up with solutions that don't shit all over women. I'll support them in that but I'm not doing it for them.

Great post Barracker

You have to base laws aroundpeople's human rights- not to the excision of the human rights of others, of course

You say 'of course' but that is precisely the point. We cannot as a society give TRA's what they are clamouring for without screwing over women.

If you can see a way that everyone can be kept safe and happy, then we badly need to hear it (for me that's a third space for any gender when it comes to things like loos).

"What does matter is not which of us is correct. What does matter is that the UK is not a theocracy and we do not legislate for religious belief."

Awesome post Lang.

Totally had it with being told that I have to believe in other people's beliefs and worse, that it will be legislated that they are true.

If you read the religious thread on AIBU you will get many people saying that people are stupid for believing in 'sky fairies'.

However, in all the studies in theology and philosophy since time immemorial, not one has been able to definitively prove OR disprove that God exists. There have been good attempts certainly, but holes can be picked in all of them.

But we are past the stage of calling people heretics and burning them at the stake for non believing. All good

Now we are being told that we have to believe something is true, because it is a feeling in a man's head, when actually there are solid scientific and logical arguments that it is a steaming pile of of horseshit.

Pencils,

The reality, though, is that you don't experience having an arm or a leg. It is just 'there'. It is only amputees who have these strong feelings of something missing.

Rat's point is that transgender people might be like amputees; they can feel and miss the bit of them that should be there but is not.

I have no idea whether this is true but the fact that, for most of us, our sexes and genders line up, is not evidence to refute it, any more than those of us with arms can tell amputees that there is no feeling to having an arm.

Just maybe punishing instead of glorifying male violence might make trans identified males safer in males spaces although there has been no evidence that they are not safe in males spaces. The argument seems to be that they are afraid therefore they are entitled to use the space that suits them.

Either gender identity is one's soul, in which case it is a religious belief and should not be legislated for unless you are arguing for a theocracy.

It's not a theocracy I'm arguing for, it's a tolerant society. One where, even if the majority are totally sure God does not exist, everyone agrees that it's not okay to repeatedly call Catholics deluded as if it's a known fact and it's not okay to refuse to consider their specific needs as Catholics on the grounds that "God does not exist". (FWIW I know this is not a perfect analogy.)

Sex, on the other hand, is a clearly demarcated material reality around which sound laws can be written where necessary.

Laws are indeed written around biological sex, where it is relevant to do. Human rights include the rights to personal and religious expression. These things are also taken into account in law.

larrygrylls, that is comparable with trans abled people who want a limb amputated which is clearly a mental illness. Transgender identified people reject the idea that they are mentally ill and have had the description of their condition changed to a medical condition. That way they can get the treatment they want instead of the treatment they need.

Okay I have read numerous threads and have it straight in my head now. It boils down to one thing - how can someone identify as female/male if there is no clear definition of what that means?

Rat
How are you justify saying that you want a 'tolerant society' when you completely disregard the concerns, rights, safety and dignity of women?

The answer to this issue is clear - a 3rd space. We would all get behind that and campaign for it

Well there is a clear meaning of what male and female means Still.

The TRAs say that that meaning is transphobic and want to change its meaning to suit their batshit agenda

StillTryingHard Yes. If there is no clear definition, men cannot become women as you cannot define either.

And if there is a clear definition (which there obviously is and its based on biology) then men cannot become women.

Exactly still. It's either a biological/sex based definition or it's candy floss. And it needs to be biologically based for many equality purposes (maternity, breastfeeding, FGM, women's sport...)

Transpeople can still have legal protections and live in any way they choose.

What rights are Catholics (or any other religious group) afforded that the rest of society isn't?

Of course you experience having an arm or a leg Larry! You can see it, feel it, move it around and all sorts. And of course amputees feel that something is missing because it actually is - a limb they used to have is no longer there.

Gender dysphoria is far more like BIID - feeling that one of your limbs shouldn't be there when it clearly is there and is functioning normally.

Hi assigned yes you're right - I accept the one that is biological reality.

Just for a moment it seemed crystal clear that because the other definition was undefinable in law it seemed madness to accept self definition in law