Please change my mind : trans

[lurker33]

I've been lurking in the feminist boards for a while now, watching the discussions on trans. I am generally a live and let live kind of person, as long as it's not affecting anyone else adversely. Unfortunately I am coming to the conclusion that transgenderism is not a good thing; mainly because it appears to be reinforcing gender stereotypes. Why can't we have boys that like traditionally girls things and girls that like traditionally boys things?

Recently I was at an event where there were people who were talking about their experiences in a technical, male dominated area. 5 speakers were billed, two of which were women. Oh, well done organisers of said event I thought, for providing a well balanced panel of speakers, including two women who I could hold up as role models to my 8 yo daughter who had attended with me.

On further reading it transpired that one of the women billed was actually a transwoman.

How can I hold up a transwoman as a role model for my daughter, especially one who has transitioned late in life? My daughter won't have the same opportunities that a boy growing up will have, won't have to put up with the casual sexism us women all have to deal with, and quite frankly my daughter has nothing at all in common with this speaker.

It made me quite angry, which surprised me, and it dawned on me that calling transwoman a woman is actually an insult to women. I'll get flamed for this I'm sure but I can see a similarity to blackface where it's insulting for a white person to pretend to be black as white people are opressors of black people. It's insulting for a man to say he is a woman when men are opressors of women.

I do acknowledge the transwoman's struggle to be accepted for who they are, but that struggle has nothing in common with the struggle that women go though every day. Transwomen should be free to live their lives as they see fit but please don't think they have anything in common with women other than being part of the human race.

Transwomen are transwomen and are of the male sex, women are women and are of the female sex. There is nothing wrong with excluding people from a group if they don't have any attributes of that group. If you are insulted by scientific fact then perhaps you need to think again.

I am not sure what I am asking really. My female socialisation means that I feel slightly dirty for having come to this conclusion. If there are any transphilic people out there, I am happy to have my mind changed if you provide me with some coherent arguments as to why I shouldn't feel this way.

ROwantrees, that was me! I've been touting that video around the threads as I think it's key to countering the argument that 'it's not a sexual fetish, shut up with the AGP stuff' that many trans activists state.

Tara explicity states that cross-dressing fetish is part of the trans definition.

To a room full of healthcare professionals, who are therefore asked to participate in that fetish in terms of naming parts of the body.

I cannot imagine any other sexual fetish where a room full of healthcare professionals would be asked to partcipate, validate and subjugate their own identity to do so where that would be OK.

This is not OK.

Basically SmG is saying they do not care that we are talking about the effects that transgender advocates are having on children's lives and women's rights because they want to talk about a very narrow group of transgender identified males and females.
Therefore they will continue to talk about what they want to talk about while sneering and denying the validity of what everyone else is talking about.
Classic, innit?

weave and wend their way

You make this place sound almost poetic.

Yes Trans is a very broad umbrella these days - I was talking about those trans women who have had medical treatment etc.

I don't know what we do about it. Talk the issues through in an open and civilised way presumably? Like some of us are doing here?

^This is not an accidental oversight.
It is at best - the incompetence of professionals in failing to realise they are conflating, then separating, then conflating two terms.^
At worst - a deliberate attempt to obscure and confuse two completely different concepts to achieve an aim

YY. And I'd go with the second for most trans orgs.

Oh I wondered when bewi would turn up to tell us what I'm saying. I can talk about whatever group of women's rights I like it's a public forum.

www.socfem.net/2017/10/eddie-izzard

I was talking about those trans women who have had medical treatment etc.

Why is that relevant when it isn't a legally meaningful category?

I can talk about whatever group of women's rights I like it's a public forum.

You keep pushing this men's rights bullshit then. And we'll keep centring women.

This is autogynephilia.

And from a reasonably prolific TRA. Everyone needs to read that.

It sounds like most people have similar views regarding dysphoric people, that they are vulnerable and need support. I think most people are happy with this if it does not impinge on the rights of women and girls.

Forcing (transitioned) trans women to use the same facilities as men, or forcing them to out themselves by using some sort of '3rd' space (segregation) is impinging on the rights of women - trans women. That is not protecting vulnerable people.

I believe it is an insult to women in the same way as blackface is to black people when men dress and behave in the manner of stereotypical women, and call themselves women. I haven't been dissuaded of this yet.

A natal male can have a female gender identity. The only evidence based treatment is transition. A white person can't have the identity of a black person - or at least there is no evidence for this sort of 'transition'. That is why they are totally different.

Forcing (transitioned) trans women to use the same facilities as men, or forcing them to out themselves by using some sort of '3rd' space (segregation) is impinging on the rights of women - trans women. That is not protecting vulnerable people.

Expecting males to use a third space is not impinging on their rights. Women have rights too. Rights to privacy and dignity. And we deserve to have them taken into consideration.

A natal male can have a female gender identity.

What does this mean? What is a female gender identity?

forcing them to out themselves by using some sort of '3rd' space (segregation)

Get over yourself! You are not the oppressed class here. Gender neutral bathrooms are not ghettos. Honestly, you sound like a 14 year old. I would happily use a gender neutral space - many women would. Sex segregated spaces allow women who for whatever reason CANNOT share a space with a biological male. Including transwomen means excluding rape victims/PTSD sufferes and religious minorities. What bathroom can they use now?

Offred nowhere in that article does he actually say he is a woman. He blurs gender expression not sex or gender roles 'I feel just as much woman as I am man'. And he is a comedian.

Did you miss the part about trying to enter women’s political spaces, bathrooms and changing rooms? Is he or is he not a woman?

There isn't a definition of 'gender' in most of them.
The definition of 'gender identity' thus becomes utterly incoherent.
You can't have an identity of a if that noun doesn't in fact exist and has no definition of its own.
Can you have a deeply held blarg identity without defining blarg?
Can you insist that others share a blarg with you, when you can't tell them what blarg is?

I have noticed this glaring absence in every glossary of terms provided by mermaids, GIRES, WHO etc.

'gender identity' is defined, and 'gender' isn't.

This is not an accidental oversight.
It is at best - the incompetence of professionals in failing to realise they are conflating, then separating, then conflating two terms.
At worst - a deliberate attempt to obscure and confuse two completely different concepts to achieve an aim.

The psychiatry link is hilarious in that it doesn't define sex. Or male, or female. But it vaguely references 'sex characteristics' and 'sexual anatomy' without explaining what these concepts might be. You can have a gender identity though, apparently, and it's a' deeply held sense' of being something they are a bit too coy to define: male/female.

The apa document is fascinating in that it does, in several places literally state that gender is pure cultural stereotypes. But then contradicts that by having it refer to sex. And then once again distinguishes it from sex by referencing performances of masculinity and femininity again. And then throughout the rest of the document has nonsensical references that correspond to the stereotype definition yet refer to fictitious events such as doctors 'assigning' such stereotypes at birth?
Pure, unadulterated conflict, confusion and contradiction.

That's all this ideology has.

It's literally "non-sense."
You can have a 'gender' but we won't/can't explain what this thing called gender is. It's not sex, except when it is and then isn't again.
You can have an identity about that gender, because, see above, we can't explain what this concept 'gender' is that your identity relates to.
Sex exists, sometimes, but only for as long as it takes for the message to self-destruct, leaving no evidence we ever acknowledged it.

You can have a deeply held sense of being female, but only so long as female doesn't mean 'two XX chromosomes and ovaries' because hey, you'd sound nuts if you had a deeply held sense of having a reproductive system that you actually don't possess.
In one context, when we're not paying attention, female means cultural stereotype, except when you the reader noticed we just said that, in which case we never said it.

Fair's fair, it was you who said this was a coherent ideology, no?

If you replace that tricky little word 'gender' with whatever you believe the true definition should be, then the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.

It's just a great big word game with no actual stable meaning anywhere to be found.

Meanwhile, sex exists.

Genuflects in front of Barracker's post.

This is what having a ‘female gender identity’ means. These are the words of Julia Serano from ‘Whipping Girl’, the ‘transfeminist manifesto’.

When I hit puberty, my newly found attraction to women spilled into my dreams of becoming a girl. For me, sexuality became a strange combination of jealousy, self-loathing, and lust. Because when you isolate an impressionable transgender teen and bombard her with billboard ads baring bikiniclad women and boys’ locker room
trash talk about this girl’s tits and that girl’s ass, then she will learn to turn her gender identity into a fetish… my thirteen-year-old brain started concocting scenarios straight out of SM handbooks. Most of my fantasies began with my abduction: I’d turn to putty in the hands of some twisted man who would turn me into a woman as part of his evil plan. It’s called forced feminization, and it’s not really about sex. It is about turning the humiliation you feel into pleasure, transforming the loss of male privilege into the best fuck ever.

This is autogynephilia.

And he is a comedian.

He used to be a comedian and he used to be funny. Now he’s just desperate.

However many appeals to authority you make, SMG, it remains the case that "gender identity" is a nebulous, intangible idea akin to a religious person's idea of the soul. You believe there is such a thing, that it is possible for a biologically male individual to have some sort of inner feminine essence. I do not. I am happy to accept that such a biologically male individual may have a profoundly felt and sincerely held belief that they have some sort of inner feminine essence, but there is nothing that compels me to share that believe.

However, in a civilized society, all that matters are the practical consequences. We should be able to find some sort of compromise position that enables gender dysphoric individuals to lead dignified, safe, secure and valued lives without encroaching on the few spaces which need to be single sex (and most of the time, 99% of the time, it doesn't matter - human beings are just human beings). But that compromise cannot be found by insisting on imposing your quasi-religious belief on others.

If we're going to go down the "right side of history" route, trials for heresy have not got a good track record, historically speaking.

I've answered that question when you've asked me before OldCrone. By all means use the search function.

Not the best idea to make a request to perform labour one could easily perform oneself.

Why is a third space for gender identity discriminatory but sex segregation and disabled segregation not?

No Izzard claims to have male and female genetics which is not the same as saying you're a man who quite likes a manicure and a bit of lippy.

What do you think about Alex SG, is she trans? Does she get to stand as a Labour party woman's officer?

You cannot keep ignoring the fact that the whole problem is that trans does not mean transsexual anymore and transgender means anyone who identifies as trans at any time and for any reason.

He doesn't say anywhere he is trying to infiltrate women's spaces. That is A Woman's Place/ Ruth Serwotka scaremongering that is saying that.