Bloody hell BBC

[WorkingItOutAsIGo]

Reading the BBC news online this morning and there is not one, but two stories about transgender people. One promoting the transition of a small child, and the other promoting sport for transgender athletes. The latter in particular looks like a direct attempt to counter the news discussion over the last few days in sport.

This isn’t news, it’s wartime propaganda.

Knicknackpaddyflak
Have you got confused there? Transmen are born female and identify as male. Their sex is female while their gender identity is transman. Transwomen are born male sexed and have a gender identify as women

Aargh - yes I got confused.

Yes, it's entirely possible that NHS and NICE guidelines will change, but nowadays they are research and evidence-based, looking at the best outcomes for the patient. It's best not to let ideology get in the way of the most effective treatment.

Well Dadjoke I do find myself in agreement with you here. The issue is the ideology of transgenderism/Queer theory, and the impact of trans lobbyists on medical practitioners.

See BMJ comment:

Published 29 October 2018
'Redesigning gender identity services: an opportunity to generate evidence'
authors: Richard Byng, general practitioner and professor in primary care research, Susan Bewley, emeritus professor of obstetrics and women’s health, Damian Clifford, consultant liaison psychiatrist, Margaret McCartney, general practitioner and freelance writer
(extracts)
"A recent feature in The BMJ implied that new services are all that’s needed to improve transgender healthcare. Providing timely, sensitive services for all, including those who decide to not pursue treatment or detransition, is important. But the article did not question the steep rise in referrals of mainly young women or the potential harms of medical overdiagnosis and overtreatment" (continues)

"Regulated medical practitioners should follow a framework of evidence, not simply respond to client expectations. Creating that evidence to inform quality standards is an ethical imperative. We need research to explore the interplays between gender identity, mental health and neurodevelopmental problems, sexual orientation, autogynephilia, and unpalatable gender roles" (continues)

open access link here:
www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4490.full?ijkey=6lX93kQA0lz5YoB&keytype=ref

I think trans men are of the male sex. Their gender is woman.

If you're talking about transmen then the sex that they were born with is female - they transition to the gender identity of males, that's the trans part.

I'm not sure if this is a confusion about transmen (born female) and transwomen (born male) or whether having said that sex is important you actually mean sex is what you identify as and not your biologically identifiable sex?

It is bloody confusing, I admit, trying to talk in terms that go against an entire lifetime of standard shared meaning.

Ah cross post. Easily done!

R0wantrees You suggested that we use the dictionary definition to determine what a man is. I suggest that's a bad idea, because you wouldn't accept it if it changed. The meaning follows the usage. The dictionary supports my definition of gender identity and yet you still don't think it's real. Legally, trans men are men under the GRA, but you wouldn't accept that, either. So I suggest we put the dictionary aside.

If you tell me that you'd accept a trans man as a man if the dictionary definition changed, then I'll happily accept using a dictionary.

R0wantrees I agree with that paper. People should be supported if they wish to detransition, and be made fully aware of the risks of transitioning before they engage in it, just as with all medical procedures. I also think sex is a real and useful category and people of the female sex are oppressed because of their phenotype.

And TRA ideologues should not attack those who research into this field as transphobes.

You may think transwomen are of the male sex, but transactivusts now insist they are if the female sex: hence the notion of “the female penis.” So I’m afraid your definitions are transphobic, Dadjoke.

This new convolution in definition and belief is to Coulter women’s questioning why, if gender and sex are not the same, it is somehow more just to segregate based on gender rather than sex, in those places where we segregate (sport, e.g.)

Given this new turn in the Möbius strip that is gender identity, a turn that is not predicated on logic or science but is a counter aimed at, above all, male colonization of all female spaces, how can anyone deny that this is, at base, a Male Rights movement?

Transwomen are not female. We segregate by sex for a reason. That reason is the inherent biological differences between the sexes. Sex-segregated spaces came about in the first place because that biological difference manifests in an overwhelming discrepancy in sex-based violence, where men account for almost all the violence women experience, whilst the reverse is not true at all. Males can and do kill women and girls with their bare hands. We cannot do the reverse to men: we don’t have the grip strength.

I’m so tired of this bullshit debate that handwaves away the stark material reality of male violence against women and girls that I’m now just going to say this: anyone who supports gender-based as opposed to sex-based segregation is colluding in the epidemic of male violence against women and girls.

Is that truly the side of history you want to stand in, men? If so, just admit it. Say: yes, I know males can and do kill women and girls with their bare hands, and for that reason women campaigned for and won sex-segregation in spaces where they’re vulnerable, but I personally think that male need to feel validated when they identify as female is more important than female health and safety.

Just fucking admit it.

OK, I'm just catching up with this thread again. I'll start with your reply to me, DadJoke.

Psychologist think that gender identity is established at a very young age - less than four.

This is incorrect. I've seen this used by TRAs before, but it's not what the scientific literature says. I'll find you my rebuttal of this 'fact' from one of my earlier posts, but it might take a while to find it, so for now, briefly, children develop an understanding of what sex they are and that this fact is fixed, usually before the age of four. This is not the same as a 'gender identity' in the way TRAs use it, although the literature is often confusing because it tends to use the terms gender and sex interchangeably.

So men are those with a male biological sex, plus those women who know they have a gender identity of male/man.

What is the use or point of insisting that these two separate groups has anything in common?

Now, if you think that gender identity is just a belief, then you might be angry at me for saying that you have one. I can't really help that.

I'm not angry with you. But it is just a belief. I'm not angry with you any more than I would be with a Christian who insists I have a soul. They have a right to believe that. I have a right to believe otherwise.

BickerinBrattle

You may think transwomen are of the male sex, but transactivusts now insist they are if the female sex: hence the notion of “the female penis.” So I’m afraid your definitions are transphobic, Dadjoke.

Yes, I have been accused of being a terf.

Given this new turn in the Möbius strip that is gender identity, a turn that is not predicated on logic or science but is a counter aimed at, above all, male colonization of all female spaces, how can anyone deny that this is, at base, a Male Rights movement?

I disagree that gender identity is not based on science, in fact I've pointed at rather a lot of it. I think sex-based protections are vital and I support the ERA.

OldCrone
This is incorrect. I've seen this used by TRAs before, but it's not what the scientific literature says. I'll find you my rebuttal of this 'fact' from one of my earlier posts, but it might take a while to find it, so for now, briefly, children develop an understanding of what sex they are and that this fact is fixed, usually before the age of four. This is not the same as a 'gender identity' in the way TRAs use it, although the literature is often confusing because it tends to use the terms gender and sex interchangeably.

Thank you very much for doing this. I'll take look. I really wish the definitions of gender and sex were better defined both medically and legally, because it's the deliberate conflation of these terms which have led to sex-based rights being eroded. Rachel McKinnon's deliberate avoidance of the question "what are women's sports for?" is a case in point.

Isn't it more accurate to describe 'sex dysphoria'? Some males want / feel they need to be female and visa versa.

Use of gender/gender identity obfuscates whats happening and also muddles the nature of treatments etc.

Wasn't there a transwoman or transman on here a while ago who said that what they suffered from was better described as sex dysphoria, because they thought their body didn't match how they felt it should be?

That makes more sense, and it indicates clearly the correlation with such disorders as body integrity identity disorder.

OldCrone

I'm not angry with you. But it is just a belief. I'm not angry with you any more than I would be with a Christian who insists I have a soul. They have a right to believe that. I have a right to believe otherwise.

The thing is, it's not like a religion in that it has wide but not universal scientific, medical and legal status. You are woman, and you know you are a woman, so your gender identity is woman. That's not a religious statement, it's just how the definition of gender identity works. You can say it's not a useful term, but it's not like a religious belief.

gender identity differs fundamentally from sexuality. you can demonstrate sexuality. usually be checking out who people sleep with. but for individuals that abstain, their body will show arousal for people of the sex they are attracted to

can you demonstrate gender identity in this way?

That's a statement of sex not of gender identity. Having brown eyes and knowing I have brown eyes doesn't also give me a brown eyed identity. It is an unnecessary overlay on top of a simple fact about a person.

The thing is, it's not like a religion in that it has wide but not universal scientific, medical and legal status. You are woman, and you know you are a woman, so your gender identity is woman

Saying a woman who does not believe in transgender ideology has a 'gender identity of woman', is akin to saying a woman who does not hold religious beliefs has a 'woman's soul'

BernardBlacksWineIcelolly
gender identity differs fundamentally from sexuality. you can demonstrate sexuality. usually be checking out who people sleep with. but for individuals that abstain, their body will show arousal for people of the sex they are attracted to

Usually, you take someone's word if they say they are gay, celibate or not, aroused or not. I'll accept it's possible to devise a test for sexuality which does not involve asking them what their sexuality is.

But your argument suggests that you accept physically measurable traits as proof. Let's say someone devised a physical test which determined what gender identity someone was - in other words, it matched what they said. Would you now accept that gender identity is real? I suspect not.

R0wantrees

Saying a woman who does not believe in transgender ideology has a 'gender identity of woman', is akin to saying a woman who does not hold religious beliefs has a 'woman's soul'

Your belief or otherwise in transgender ideology has no bearing on whether you know you are a woman or not.

Religion also has scientific, medical, and legal status.

There are neurological studies that examine structures of the brain correlated with religious experience. Medicine recognizes that care must sometimes be tailored to a patient’ s faith. Law recognizes the right to freely practice religion.

That right however does not extend to insisting others change their use of language; it doesn’t permit them to target university professors to be fired for unbelief; and it doesn’t trump the rights of other protected classes.

You can believe in gender identity located in a soul, a mysterious essence, a cluster of gray matter or in the hippocampus — it still doesn’t give you the right to insist society rearrange itself in accordance with that belief, or that medicine conduct unethical, uncontrolled pharmaceutical and surgical experimentation in children, or that women recognize males as women.

It is not possible to change sex, and sex is a material reality. It can be observed and proven.

The ONLY thing confirming that a man has the gender identity if a woman is his say-so. That’s it. And women are not required to obey the say-so of men. To insist that we do is patriarchy in action.

Still working on what you said in your post over an hour ago, DadJoke.

People who don't have disorders of proprioception don't even know they have it, and yet proprioception is real.

If your gender matches your sex at birth, you won't feel any conflict between your gender identity and sex, and because of that, you will know you are woman without any conflict. That sure and certain knowledge is your gender identity.

This isn't a very good analogy, because proprioception has a definition which anyone can understand: 'perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body.' So I can immediately understand what it is and what effect it has.

What is the definition of gender identity? I have yet to see a definition which isn't based on stereotypes. If you can't define what it is, how can it exist?

You say 'if your gender matches your sex'. Gender, to me, is a bunch of sexist stereotypes, which have generally been used to keep women in a subservient position in society. If you think it means something else, what is your definition?

Your belief or otherwise in transgender ideology has no bearing on whether you know you are a woman or not.

Woman= adult human female
This is based on sex.
Humans can't change sex

I am finished for the day. Will post more tomorrow.

The thing is, it's not like a religion in that it has wide but not universal scientific, medical and legal status.

'Gender identity' has no legal status in the UK, although there may be some countries where this is true.

Scientific and medical status? Really? Can you post some links for that?

You are woman, and you know you are a woman, so your gender identity is woman.

I know I'm a woman because I'm know what sex I am. That's not a gender identity, it's scientific fact. 'Woman' is not an identity, it's a word which means 'adult female human'.

It also says nothing about my personality. I could be anywhere from extremely feminine to extremely masculine, but I would still be a woman, because biology is what decides that.

Let's say someone devised a physical test which determined what gender identity someone was - in other words, it matched what they said. Would you now accept that gender identity is real? I suspect not

shall we cross that bridge when we come to it? someone might develop a test to prove the presence of souls, but until they do, I'd rather discuss reality

My point is that sexuality has real, tangible outcomes - sexual arousal (or not).

what are the tangibles of a female gender identity?

I would say for example 'women are of the sex class that produce ova and gestate young. My body is of this sex class, therefore I am a woman'

I'm afraid that your post at 16:41 has left me none the wiser about how someone with a body not of that sex class decides they are a woman.

If you're not saying 'my body is like this, ergo I am a woman', then what is the reasoning? what are the defining factors of the category 'woman' that this penis bearing women have?

The ONLY thing confirming that a man has the gender identity if a woman is his say-so. That’s it. And women are not required to obey the say-so of men. To insist that we do is patriarchy in action.

As someone said on another thread:

Nothing illustrates more vividly the subordination of women than men deciding who can be one.