If you're pro Self ID for trans people please could you explain it to me?

[ReluctantCamper]

I have never debated with anyone who's pro self ID because they invariably post 'transwomen are women' on threads and never return.

When I have arrived at a thought out position I'm keen to debate it with others who think differently to test my reasoning - that's how I feel now.

I know we have a number of pro self ID lurkers - anyone feel like explaining to me why it's a good idea?

I promise to carefully read what you say and take it seriously, I don't promise to agree.

Come on, it's my birthday, someone treat me!

I smile, move on and concentrate on finding people who are open minded and willing to listen to my arguments

I am willing to listen to your arguments. But you're not making any. You've stated a belief set and a utopian idea but haven't responded to any questions.

Or does "Willing to listen to my arguments" just mean, "gosh you're right" without any further examination or understanding; just a superficial acceptance.

If self ID means that on hospital wards, changing facilities, toilets, showers etc 'women and any bloke who happens to feel like it' then seriously, why bother with maintaining sex segregation?

It's ridiculous to say I'm fully entitled and supported in wanting privacy from having to stand in a communal open swimming pool changing room and strip off alongside a man, unless in his head that man has made a choice that he self defines as a woman. In which case I will have the exact same subjective experience as I would do stripping off in front of any man, I'm just now committing a hate crime if I show any sign of minding about it.

It's insane. Unless you believe in 'female penises'. In which case again, why bother with sex segregation? Changing rooms aren't segregated by gender, you don't choose whether to change with the people who like knitting and wearing pink or the people who like football and fixing cars.

It's also worth asking: why do TRAs not and really emphatically not, I've seen tweets about 'die rather' want unisex facilities?

What about s9meone who says 'I've always voted labour in the past, but can't right now because of trans women taking places on the Jo Cox leadership scheme, AWS and Lilly Madigan?

I’m so confused. Every time I think I’ve got this, I get lost again.

Separating gender from sex is good idea. Unfortunately it's relentlessly pounced on as transphobic

I’m sure I’ve seen trans people being really cross because people don’t understand the difference between gender and sex.

So if you say, hang on, only men can be transwomen. So transwomen cannot be women, is this not when a transperson will say “no “man” and “woman” are genders not sexes!”

And the argument is that gender is real and is in your brain and your brain is separate from the rest of your body that has a sex - hence the argument for self-ID because the person thinking with the brain is the one that knows what the gender is… is that it?

And if that is it, trans people/allies seem to be saying that the medical opinion is on their side - is that true?

I haven’t read the entire thread so apologies if this has been asked but I’d like to know why people who are for self-id are ignoring the travsecual people who are AGAINST it? What do you think of their reasons? Why are you listening to self-id people over them?

langcleg How can you bring up Jimmy saville into the self ID debate? Fairly well documented that he was proud to be a man.
That’s exactly my point about the issue isn’t self ID although that’s what brought it to the surface. The issue is victims of abuse don’t get listened too, powerful men are protected, people like to blur lines that aren’t blurry. My point was a young Jimmy Saville should have been charged the first time he offended, put of the sex offenders register and banned from being anywhere near children (or indeed anyone). The register needs to be policed, DBS checks need to be thorough and penalties severe. None of that has anything to do with you’re attitude to a floral print. Look at Charles Bronson he has served waaaaay beyond his initial sentence because his straight up violence has been recognised. Let’s be very clear about sexual violence the same way.

Here is my reason for being against self id. All the “it would never happen” folks - it has happened in Canada which a,ready has self id.

www.lifesitenews.com/news/sexual-predator-jailed-after-claiming-to-be-transgender-in-order-to-assault

@LangCleg excellent post "Under self-ID, cross dressing sex offenders will have unimpeded access to all spaces where women and children are vulnerable.

This is not difficult logic to follow.

Make an argument as to why you believe this is ok? Because if you support self-ID, this is what you support. No amount of prevaricating from you can escape this. This is what you support. So tell us why it's ok. And make us believe it."

I wish someone could explain why self id is ok. Do we let doctors self id? Is a doctor anyone who thinks they are a doctor? If not, why not?

I've just come across this person, who is 'widening the bandwidth of being a woman'.

Alex has taken no hormones and had no surgery. Surely Alex is widening the bandwidth of being a man?

Can anyone explain to me why Alex is a kind of woman, not a kind of man? Alex is a lesbian by the way, in a long term relationship with a woman. Apparently previously straight women are finding their inner lesbian by fancying Alex.

Now don't get me wrong, Alex sounds fun. Alex doesn't sound like a woman.

www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/this-transgender-woman-has-a-full-beard-and-she-couldnt-be-h?utm_term=.kuKKoXERm#.gwp9XdWQy

Miriyou will not be able to make a coherent narrative out of it. No one can, and that's part of the issue. It's full of contradictions.

You will often see bits of quoted medical research used to appear to back up claims like the lady brain theory or that chromosomes aren't actually xx or xy. When you dig down into those sources they're usually very fringe, often not reliable and the kind of fringe science stuff you could find to prove aliens existed, or that the Loch Ness monster is swimming around. There are bits there that show its a field still being discovered, but it's not fact and it's not established, where there's overwhelming established centuries of evidence and research that prove the contrary.

My biggest issues with the sexed brain: (you'll find lots of discussion on this around FWR)

• how can I have a sexed organ. My kidney is not a female kidney. My heart is not a female heart.

• the brain works in conjunction with the reproductive sex organs in the body to produce the necessary hormones to make them function. If there's a confusion then surely those organs would not be in working order

• To believe there is some consciousness in the brain that is separate from the body and capable of 'landing' in the wrong body is basically a belief in a sexed soul. (Actually most people believing in reincarnation believe the soul isn't sexed and that people incarnate sometimes as a man and sometimes as a woman in different lives). If it's a belief in a soul then it's a religion, a faith, and cannot be legally encoded as compulsory for all people than any other religion.

• Women interested in women's rights are deeply cautious and cynical about the 'lady brain' suggestions, as this was the given 'science' for oppressing women for centuries, including withholding the vote. Their lady brains were biologically less strong and able than those of men, they were by birth inferior beings in need of guardianship and ruling by the superior class, and their little brains could not handle legal comprehension etc etc. To agree with a 'lady brain' or that gender roles are physically innate is to agree that women are rightfully inferior to men and the oppression of women is therefore right and good.

Thanks - so the GMC is advocating treating trans people with drugs and surgery to make them happier but not because they are actually on board with the mind/body split? Because seeing people saying "medical science agrees with us" is freaking me out a bit!

I wonder if Transwomen will be accepted more when all the late transitioners are gone and most TW trandition as kids without going through male puberty. They would fly under the radar more and the sports issue wouldn’t be do in your face.

Myunicorn

Quite. It seems that as well as the revival of lady brain ideas there has also been a revival in the idea of racial brains too. Do the pro self ID people support these theories too?

africacheck.org/2015/03/12/analysis-black-brain-white-brain-the-new-wave-of-racist-science/

The last decade has seen a revival of a very old and long-discredited idea: that intelligence is influenced by racial origin.

Is it a coincidence that both these things are seeing a renaissance?

Medical science = some article in a journal that's been debunked multiple times. Hospitals aren't brain scanning babies to identify their sex, they do it on a brief visual scan in utero based on seeing external genitals. Archaologists are digging up humans centuries old and knowing pretty much at first sight if they're male or female by the bone characteristics, and definitely via DNA.

Its rather like the suicide stats that are constantly shared. The origin of those stats was from a tiny, tiny sample of self selected people, and is not in any way representative of the population a whole.

Unfortunately anything that 'proves' a useful point tends to be appropriated and not always used honestly.

Btw to say this stuff means I'm being 'a biological essentialist' which like terf and truscum is another term of abuse for someone preoccupied with material reality.

No one wants to discriminate against people who ‘used to have a penis’ btw. But I absolutely do want to discriminate against someone who DOES have a penis (but claims to be a woman and wants to work in a refuge, be incarcerated with women, and shower next to naked female teenagers at the pool.)

There has to be a line.

^Dear Flamingo,

Don't worry, just ask him to tell you he is smooth shaven. Then you can happily sleep with him despite your beardphobia.

HTH

Popcorn.^

@MrsMcGarry "I think that the majority of discrimination that women face is down to the social construct of gender rather than biology." Can you explain what this means, please?

Justanotherzombie wrote - "it's not for me to decide who anyone else is".

Self-identification of gender identity (and biological sex, if transactivists win their demands) is not about individual people deciding another persons sex, because individuals have never had this power over other people. Self-identification is about removing the power of the state to decide someone's biological sex. Government politicians, civil servants, medical experts and scientists will be silenced about the reality of biology. Women and girls are oppressed through their biology. Therefore, self-identification will harm women and girls.

Where are the transgender people (in the old sense of transsexual sex dysmorphia, not the new sense of cross-dresser), whose gender identity is not already recognised by the state, without self-identification? I think we can probably count them on the fingers of one hand.

People, who are not transsexual, are already benefitting from many organisations acting as if self-identification is already law, out of fear of transphobia (but it is not yet law). If self-identification does eventually become law, it will only make it even easier for transsexuality to be hijacked and for rights to be removed from women and girls.

Did anyone ever explain how I (we) know I'm (we're) a woman (women)?

Tbh I think if someone can explain that to me I might be swayed but no one can ever answer, except with the biology thing obvs.

I don't think MrsMcGarry has any hope of respond8ng- our questions are piling up!

I don't think she can answer. She admitted that her notion of what self ID means was a utopian ideal and I suppose the thing with utopias, like identities, is that they are subjective and mean whatever you want them to mean.