Spreading the idea that everyone has a gender identity

[Macareaux]

Mermaids has quite a reach. Influencing consumer groups.

The ease with which schools, workplaces and other organisations are being brainwashed is quite astounding

I read a book that said:
Aristotle, History of Animals, Book IX: "Wherefore women are more compassionate and more readily made to weep, more jealous and querulous, founder of the railing, and more contentious. The female also is more subject to depression of spirits and despair than the male. She is also more shameless and false, more readily deceived, and more mindful of injury, more watchful, more idle, and on the whole less excitable than the male. On the contrary, the male is more ready to help, and, as it has been said, braver than the female; and even in malaria, if the sepia is struck with a trident, the male comes to help the female, but the female makes her escape if the male is struck."

This is used to this day by misogynists to support misogyny.

I will donate to Fair Play. Nic Williams is superbly on point and she has the research and stats to support her arguments. I back her 100 per cent.

Sarah - yes I can see the bigger picture and I understand that gender is the tool that oppresses women all around the world. Also yes of course it's a source of toxic masculinity.

Most aspects of identity in a large part develop through social interaction I'm not claiming you can separate gender identity development from socialisation. I agree it is also affected by sexuality - there is a link between different sexualities and gendered behaviour from childhood through to adulthood.

But I can't see how you're connecting that to someone who feels they have the wrong secondary or primary sex characteristics. You have women that have lived as out, gender non conforming lesbians for 30 or 40 years coming to a realisation that they are men - and want to have a deep voice and facial hair. How do you explain the mechanism behind that?

People who find consent hilarious are not safe to be around.

My gender identity is radical feminist.

That is I analyse gender as being a sexist and profoundly misogynistic mechanism of social control.

Gender is quite simply the oppression of girls and women. Gender is male supremacism.

One might as well say "my sense of my place within male supremacism" when one employs the obfuscating and deeply sexist term "gender identity".

It's a load of bollocks that suits the status quo down to the ground because whilst individuals are narcissisticly trying to find themselves via an ephemeral inward looking "gender identity" they aren't outwardly rebelling against constrictive and oppressive sexual politics.

I read this book about five years ago.

Blew my mind. I believe it

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00DCCRBIW/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o08_?psc=1&tag=mumsnetforum-21&ie=UTF8

When it comes to sex, common wisdom holds that men roam while women crave closeness and commitment. But in this provocative, headline-making book, Daniel Bergner turns everything we thought we knew about women's arousal and desire inside out. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with renowned behavioral scientists, sexologists, psychologists, and everyday women, he forces us to reconsider long-held notions about female sexuality.

This bold and captivating journey into the world of female desire explores answers to such thought-provoking questions as: Are women perhaps the less monogamous sex? What effect do intimacy and emotional connection really have on lust? What is the role of narcissism—the desire to be desired—in female sexuality? Are political gains for women ("No means no") detrimental in the bedroom? And is the hunt for a "female Viagra" anything but a search for the cure for monogamy?

Bergner goes behind the scenes of some of the most groundbreaking experiments on sexuality today and confronts us with controversial, sometimes uncomfortable findings. Incendiary, profoundly insightful, and brilliantly illuminating, What Do Women Want? will change the conversation about women and sex, and is sure to spark dynamic discussion for years to come.

reallyanother

I just don’t get why the insistance that adopting the societal indications turns you into that gender. Because it doesn’t.

Some people that change their hormones and physical bodies will say they already feel like they are that gender first. They change their physical characteristics (as much as is possible) so that they physically see themselves and are seen by others as the gender they already feel/ know they are. Yes I know that's the standard trans ideology..

Yes i have issues with my body. But i accept no amount of counselling or surgery will change the physicality i was born with.

I would think it must be hard to build up a good sense of self esteem if you feel like you can't accept the physicality you were born with? Or can't change how you feel. I think if counselling worked though you wouldn't have to change your physicality because you might perceive yourself differently.

People can find it hard to imagine themselves in a different place when they're on the other side of it. It can take years and it can be quite difficult to take a close look into yourself but you could find someone that could safely support you to do that. Who knows what's on the other side of that - it might be a better place? Anyway enough of me telling you what you could do.

Disagreeing with someone in a discussion isn't about consent, it's having a different point of view. You don't need consent to disagree with someone on an internet forum. You disagree with me so you're gaslighting me - something you do a lot to people.

Your posts are beginning to feel like a personal attack.

"think the butch lesbian is expressing an aspect of her internal gender identity yes."
I think this is the typical lazy, institutionalized heterosexuality, innate gender bollocks thinking being repeated here. There are many possible explanations for butch, but you have to start from the simple fact that society gives one overwhelming model for couples, one male, one female, one masculine, one feminine. So what do you do as a lesbian couple, or as a lesbian? You reject femininity as being a method of behaviour specific to the female half of a hetrosexual couple. You create a lesbian equivalent of masculinity, as it were, or take the worthy aspects of masculinity that females are typically not allowed or encoraged to express. You perhaps seek to create a specifically lesbian mode of expression.........and so on. All of which are social reactions to being a lesbian in a society that has no place for you. And which has fuck all to do with anything innate in terms of gender, especially when society does not present you with any valid way to be lesbian. it's damn insulting to all our lesbian foremothers to claim that what they tried to create was innate in some sense, rather than some reaction to a society which either denied they existed/should exist, or certainly gave them no valid way to exist apart from aping what they were not. Saying it's just innate gender let's society off the hook for their effect on what lesbians created in response to the restrictions placed on us.

SupermatchGame
That is how trans men report feeling - the need to be seen and recognised as a man, in order to be seen as themselves.

Isn't this completely different from an internal 'gender identity', though? If the aim of the transition is primarily to change how other people see you, rather than to change the way you are?

And isn't it one of those things which is always going to fail? You have no control over other people's perception of you. If that is how you live your life, with the aim of controlling how other people see you, you are going to be permanently disappointed.

As a biological woman with a feminine gender identity you welcome periods as a rite of passage. You welcome puberty and want to make yourself attractive as a womanly woman. You welcome these things not as biological fact but as progress towards a picture you have of yourself and this includes being attractive to men. This will all be making some readers want to puke of course. Sorry about this

That describes me except I welcomed the biological changes as biological facts and for the other reasons you give. I have never been uncomfortable about the physical aspects of being a girl or a woman or being feminine. I have never experienced the sort of self-loathing which seems so common on here.

I suppose I do have a gender identity as I actively choose feminine trappings. I am not a man and I don't want to be a man or dress or look like a man. I don't wear anything which is considered masculine clothing in our society. The idea of "unisex" or "gender - neutral" is horrible to me ( it conjures up beige dungarees or primary coloured dungarees)

However I don't see my feminity as problematic or negative. I have no difficulty in being assertive or in speaking up for myself or in not taking on "wife-work" or in maintaining my career and my financial and personal independence.

You weren't disagreeing. You were laughing.

I was laughing at being told I don't take no for answer because I was disagreeing with an opinion.

There are many possible explanations for butch, but you have to start from the simple fact that society gives one overwhelming model for couples, one male, one female, one masculine, one feminine. So what do you do as a lesbian couple, or as a lesbian? You reject femininity as being a method of behaviour specific to the female half of a hetrosexual couple. You create a lesbian equivalent of masculinity, as it were, or take the worthy aspects of masculinity that females are typically not allowed or encoraged to express

I am not trying to be goady but why would a lesbian couple feel the need to reject femininity for 1 partner and create a masculine identity for that partner?

You have rejected conventional coupledom so I don't understand why you (general) you would adopt conventional masculinity?

Also genuine question - what are the worthy aspects of masculinity that females are typically not allowed or encoraged to express?

They don't Lass. SomeDyke is saying that's the the cliche uncomprehending straight people use to try to understand lesbian couples..

Woman says : no
Response : I disagree with your no
Woman says : why won't you take no for an answer
Response :

Analysis : responder finds consent amusing

what are the worthy aspects of masculinity that females are typically not allowed or encoraged to express?

In my experience it has been physical stuff, and I am sure that is not uncommon given that physical size is the only difference (IMO)

I yacht race, skilled yacht racers don't need exceptional strength, if you are busting your gut you are wasting your energy, as there are techniques and equipment to manage that. The power of the wind and sea is beyond men and women to handle without kit. And yet women are still struggling 30 years after I tried to race professionally to get represented in the sport because of this fixed view. My stamina was as good as any other humans but that is ignored.

I'm impressed by that Picasso. I am afraid of the sea.

All sailors have a very healthy fear of the sea. The idea is to stay in the boat.

But the boat leans over. A lot. And water comes on board. I just couldn't do it. The sea itself gives me a churning feeling. I feel like it's saying 'fuck you'. Plus I nearly drowned once. I like to look at it from land.

Anyway that was revealing! I'm just impressed and a little jealous I suppose.

When the boat heels over the keel below the surface is in balance with the sail above the water, equal pressure. That is the design of a sailboat.

Sometimes it goes a bit wrong and the mast goes in the water, and snaps off and you lose your skipper over the side and have to man over board the silly fucker. All those things happened to me. And I just dealt with it. I may well have got a bit freaked out and wanted to go home but you actually can't as you have a broken boat in the sea, so you figure out how to get it back with the crew still alive. Women can do that. I know because they have, lots of them.

Picassospaintbrush
I love to sail but I like the little deadly boats best.

If anyone wants a go? Not the scary racing bit breaking masts, just gentle sailing, we do it at weekends in the Solent. Women only.

She Sails

I am big yacht person Bewilderness, I was spoilt having access to the RN yachts.