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.

CaptainMarvelBunting

I just have a low tolerance for men setting up camp here and requiring endless labour from women who are discussing their own rights and protections. There are other ways to be unhelpful than doing an Anthony Watson.

My original hope was that if people asking me questions on a topic start a thread on this topic so that those people could get an answer and I wouldn't threadcrap. I'd really prefer people didn't engage if it's not useful or productive. I mainly lurk here.

On the basis of the view you've expressed here, that I am wasting your time when you could be having more productive discussions, I'll finish here on this thread.

Your position here supports the view that you think that the medical establishment are pretending that gender identity is real to assist transgender people. Is that a fair summary?

No, I'm saying it's a construct which can neither be proven true nor false. I think it has come about because it is helpful in transgender medicine, given you can rightly avoid the stigma associated with the clinical word that describes a false fixed belief.

I'll finish here on this thread.

A familiar refrain when the questions get too difficult to answer.

I'll finish here on this thread

now I'll never learn what a person with a male gender identity is like

and DadJoke has been saved from spewing a load of sexist crap, since that is all gender identity means

the inability of people to see how sexist it is to say 'women are like this, men are like that', on the basis of anything other than biology constantly amazes me

I mainly lurk here.

Perhaps this thread will be helpful?
Many people who are trying to understand the issues better have said they find it useful. (it is well-referenced)
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me

still waiting to hear the differences between a male and female gender identity

I think DadJoke's definition was a woman is someone who feels like a woman and a man is someone who feels like a man.

I think DadJoke's definition was a woman is someone who feels like a woman and a man is someone who feels like a man

gosh

ground breaking stuff

DadJoke, it's not my time you're wasting, its the women who have been painstakingly trying to answer your content free assertions and pull clear answers from you to their questions. I think that's incredibly disrespectful of a man on a feminist message board, and you can nurse your personal offence at me pointing out your disrespect wherever you choose. I'm well used to dealing with ManPouts.

A familiar refrain when the questions get too difficult to answer.

Isn't it just.

CaptainMarvelBunting

I am not remotely offended at what you said, and I appreciate you spelling out what I was doing. I am truly sorry for being disrespectful .

DadJoke, it's not my time you're wasting, its the women who have been painstakingly trying to answer your content free assertions and pull clear answers from you to their questions.

And DadJoke had the gall to accuse me of 'sidestepping the question' when I asked him to link to some research to back up his claims of a scientific consensus on 'gender identity'.

DadJoke fair enough. Go well.

It's wartime propaganda? Who are we at war with?

Your gender identity is your knowledge of yourself a man, woman or neither. Usually this matches your sex defined at birth. If not, you are transgender. I am really not sure how much clearer I can be. Do you know you are a woman? You are a woman. Do you know you are a man? You are a man. That's the difference.

I don't understand why people like DJ have such a blindspot over this. I don't believe in gender as anything but oppressive sex role stereotypes. Therefore I don't believe in "gender identity". The idea that everyone has one just because they know what sex they are or fancy that they have an opposite sex brain, with no material proof of this, is IDEOLOGY.

If you think not, show me the proof that gender dysphoria is anything more than a psychological condition.

I'm musing aloud, I don't expect DJ to answer it. But it would be helpful if he took it on board, for all future arguments he might have.

I know that I am a woman because I am female, and 'woman's to me means being female.

If trans people insist that being a woman =/= being female, well then I can't know whether I am a woman. Not without a definition.

Somehow transactivists think that we would all instinctively know if we were men or women, even if the words had no meaning. This is, of course, nonsense.

I don't understand why people like DJ have such a blindspot over this. I don't believe in gender as anything but oppressive sex role stereotypes. Therefore I don't believe in "gender identity". The idea that everyone has one just because they know what sex they are or fancy that they have an opposite sex brain, with no material proof of this, is IDEOLOGY.

I wonder if the blindspot is because the stereotypical male role is one that most men feel they fit into? Unlike the female role, which very few women actually fit and are comfortable with. Men assume that because they are comfortable with the roles that are expected of them that women must be as well. Of course many of us aren't, because those roles were forced on us by men, whereas men chose their roles for themselves.

So most men have a gender identity of 'male' because they fit the role that men have chosen for themselves through the ages. The ones who don't, either think they have a 'female' gender identity because they like doing things that are usually only for women (like wearing dresses or make up), or are gay men who are totally confused by the whole thing, like Sam Smith.

Many women don't feel they have a gender identity at all, because they don't fit the sex role that men have chosen for us through the ages. Other women, particularly young women and girls, think that they are non-binary or have a 'male' gender identity, because of the shit stereotypes which go with being female.

I don't think it's possible to separate the idea of 'gender identity' from gender roles or stereotypes.

I don't think it's possible to separate the idea of 'gender identity' from gender roles or stereotypes

I absolutely agree. when a genderist does attempt a definition (see Meg John Barker's above) it's invariably sexist claptrap. how could it be anything else?

I don't think it's possible to separate the idea of 'gender identity' from gender roles or stereotypes

Just to add to this point, even DadJoke's definitions he posted aren't really definitions in the true sense, because the terms used need further definition.

the inner sense of maleness or femaleness

What does this mean?

'The inner conviction that one is male, female, ambivalent, or neutral.'

Well, I have an inner conviction that I'm female, but it's based on my body. What else could it be?

The inherent sense that one belongs to a particular sex.

the psychological sense of being male or female

one’s internal sense of being male, female, or something else

These are all meaningless unless you can explain what 'an internal sense of being female' actually is.

These are all meaningless unless you can explain what 'an internal sense of being female' actually is.

It seems to either mean 'I want to be the opposite sex' and/or "I want to be treated as if I were the opposite sex by other people (in a limited number of stereotypical ways)"

I've just been thinking again about this idea of 'an internal sense of being female', and 'inner sense of maleness or femaleness'. For that, you need a definition of female and femaleness which can be experienced by someone who is not female.

Some dictionary definitions:

Female: 'of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes.'

Femaleness: the fact or quality of being female; the qualities (as of form, physiology, or behavior) that distinguish an individual that produces large usually immobile gametes from one that produces spermatozoa or spermatozoids

I'm struggling to see how a male person can have an inner sense of being female or of femaleness.

Some great posts on this thread.

Others were somewhat less enlightening.

I know I really shouldn't invest too much time trying to understand the circular and woolly non-definitions of the TRA ideology, but....if gender identity is about recognising that you are male or female, how does that square with those gender dysphoric transexuals who recognise the truth of their biology?

Hawkeye I tried asking that yesterday, apparently those individuals have a gender identity that is the same as their birth sex, despite their dysphoria and surgery.

So that's clear as mud.

the reasoning is so flimsy isn't it?

it just chimes with people's inerrant sexism, which is why it has gained so much traction