We can tell each other's sex with great accuracy. No point pretending otherwise.
^^All of what Barracker said.
I’ve noticed that there seems to be an idea put forward by some male-bodied TRA types (but not among all trans people of course) that other people around them,
- can’t tell and don’t know or perhaps - CAN tell and DO know but SHOULDN’T SAY or more accurately:
- shouldn’t feel they can SAFELY say that male-bodied people are male.
Because noticing maleness and speaking it aloud would not fit with the gender presentation that the male bodied person has chosen for themselves and wants to be recognised as.
This authoritarian TRA idea about what other people should think of me is based on a fallacy in the first place.
No one can control how other people see them or perceive them. That’s a universal truth that’s just part of life. I’m sure many of us would prefer to be seen more in a certain way or less in a certain way. But most of us accept the reality that it’s not going to happen and the perception of others is completely out of our hands.
The reality is. Women know who is male and female. Of course we can tell. It’s not something we have any control over seeing when we look at other people, and hearing when others speak. We can tell male and female voices apart on the phone or on the radio. Telling the difference between male and female is something the smallest child can do. For women I imagine it is hard wired into us because we know our safety depends on it.
The claim that women ‘don’t know’ (or more accurately, ‘shouldn’t feel they can say’) when they see biological sex, may be based in the male-bodied person’s belief that their own efforts to take on ‘feminine’ stereotyping in their physical appearance, via ‘feminine’ clothes, make up etc now means that women genuinely can’t tell that they are male.
or
The male-bodied person has made no such efforts of stereotyping to give themselves a ‘feminine appearance’, but women are being told that if they (factually correctly) perceive this male bodied person is in fact male, then that woman’s understanding needs to be re educated that what it means to be female now includes anyone who says so.
Women are often raised to be polite and are often tolerant and in the knowledge of feminine-presenting maleness, we will often on a courtesy basis, accept male-bodied people who are not bothering anyone else in the ladies.
But that is as a conditional courtesy not a right. A legal right to this access in all circumstances, ie legal gender self Identification, is being demanded for validation purposes. This can’t be allowed to happen. Female-bodied people’s safety and comfort- in the women’s, ie female toilets of all places- must come first.
(for the avoidance of any doubt, female-bodied people regardless of their gender identification, or personal appearance, are always welcome in the women’s toilets.)
Women (along with men too i’d imagine) also object to being co-opted as unwitting actors into other people’s validation fantasies. Particularly when there is a sexual gratification element to that validation. Eg in AGP.
What kind of person wants to campaign to legally force (rather than seek consent) other people into that kind of participatory role though?
What decent person doesn’t care about the consent of others?
Doesn’t care about others’ (ie women’s) feelings of safety and privacy in places in which women should be able to feel safe and private?
That’s why women find legal gender self identification a dangerous idea, because it specifically seeks to override women’s consent. We get attempts from men to override our consent all the fucking time from our childhood, because men objectify and denigrate us because of our female sex- (not one single shit is given our own gender identification in this sex-based objectification btw. We can’t self identify our way out of that).
And being constantly objectified is shit for us and it’s frightening and dangerous for us.
But just because objectification is clearly wrong, (because eg it denies consent and personal agency to the object) that doesn’t then mean that observing another person’s biological sex is also wrong.
In some situations it is a highly relevant thing to observe a person’s biological sex. And some of those situations it will be important be able to freely, openly do so for the purposes of respecting someone’s consent and personal agency and autonomy. Women know this because we pay the price when this does not happen.
Also OP theres’s no such thing as ‘birth gender’. Did you mean biological sex, as observed at birth? I don’t think babies are capable of taking on gender stereotypes at birth although i would accept that they are foisted on to a lot of babies pretty much immediately.