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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

How should we treat trans people?

564 replies

coffeeplease16 · 23/09/2019 19:34

I have been browsing the feminist thread with interest and been reading lots of arguments that accepting trans = encroaching on women’s rights and women’s only spaces. If you yourself believe that you can’t change sex, and being a women = having a vagina - how do you think we should include trans people in our society? I am genuinely interested, and not meaning to be goady. What is the ideal - how can we protect the rights of women without ostracising trans people from our society?

OP posts:
bd67th · 25/09/2019 16:08

But without severe medical intervention that's not realistic for me.

And probably not even then. You'd live in fear of being outed.

I feel that the trans community is giving me a choice of medical mutilisation or acceptance of rape and other discrimination.

This insinuation that oppression can be identified into and out of is the most offensive and infuriating aspect of the trans ideology. It blames every woman on earth for every incident of violence, rape, murder, harassment, discrimination, underpayment, you name it, that has been visited on us because of our sex. And it's bullshit. No one ever asked the German women and girls raped by the men of the Red Army at the end of WW2, or the women and girls raped by men in the Congo, or in South Sudan, or girls whose own mothers conspire to iron their breasts or mutilate their vulvas, what their gender identity was before choosing to hurt them. No one asked the millions of girl foeti aborted for being girls in India what their gender identity was.

Go on, twitterati, screencap this post. I dare you.

BickerinBrattle · 25/09/2019 16:18

And what about the fact that dysphoria is no longer required for transitioning?

In fact, TW now speak much less of dysphoria than they do of EUPHORIA.

The euphoria they feel when doing themselves up as women.

It’s such a turn-on!

Witness the Telegraph columnist so EUPHORIC over what he calls his second puberty and his budding teenage tits — which he just loves to make bounce by running up the stairs.

Why the fuck are we elevating sexual excitement to a civil right?

Especially a sexual excitement that is premised on penetrating women’s boundaries?

Witness the TW filming himself masturbating in a cubicle in the women’s toilets.

Genderism, uncoupled as it is now from the psychological distress of dysphoria, is rape culture writ large, with TM (who transition for very different reasons than do TW) and children used as human shields to deflect understanding of that — meaning identity confusion is intentionally, iatrogenically, being induced (and we know from the 1980s-1990’s faddish escalation in Dissociative Identity Disorder diagnoses how easily identity confusion can be induced) in children to cloak the sexual purposes of men.

The pounding on the windows in Brighton was metaphor in action.

There is no Golden Mean of reasonable accommodation to be found here unless and until genderism is divorced from the notion of “identity,” recoupled to the psychological condition of dysphoria and/or body dysmorphia — conditions previously acknowledged as exceedingly rare — and then, like every other psychiatric illness, studied, evaluated, and treated using properly controlled study design and evidence-based protocols. Which, by the way have to include the new modalities of therapy that have come into practice since the days when talk therapy, ie psychoanalysis Freud-style, was found to be ineffective and discarded in favor of medical and surgical alteration. Evidence-based therapy protocols have come a VERY long way since then.

Justhadathought · 25/09/2019 16:23

I think many do pass a lot of the time. That’s fine we can disagree, I’m not obsessed

No, they don't. Just because most people are too polite to point or stare does not mean that the 'oddness' or downright bleedin' obvious has not been registered and recognised.

LordProfFekkoThePenguinPhD · 25/09/2019 16:27

I was recently in a city that is known for being ‘at the forefront’ of medical meddling. So yes there were more trans around than usual I suppose. And not the ‘I have a beard and I’m a woman’ types.

There is just something about the way people nice, hold themselves, mannerisms - but the way the dress or have their hair (in a lot of cases there was an attempt to ‘blend in’). There is just something - even if you aren’t directly looking at a person, they just catch your eye. It’s hard to put your finger on it.

LordProfFekkoThePenguinPhD · 25/09/2019 16:28

Bloody hell: ‘There is just something about the way people walk, hold themselves, mannerisms - not the way the dress...’

DecomposingComposers · 25/09/2019 16:30

No, they don't
How can you possibly know this?

If you observe someone that you recognise as being trans well, obviously, they don't pass. How do you know that countless other men and women that you see aren't actually TM or TW who do pass?

LordProfFekkoThePenguinPhD · 25/09/2019 16:32

Good question - but build, poise, voice, size of extremities, Adam’s apple... there are lots of cues. Cosmetic surgery? Well that helps I suppose... how many have medical intervention? I still say it would be difficult to pass without (cosmetic and body) surgery.

DecomposingComposers · 25/09/2019 16:39

But you can only say that no one passes if you've seen a statistically large enough group and have correctly identified the TM and TW in a "blind" test.

Otherwise all you can say is that you can identify those that you can identify.

Dangerfloof · 25/09/2019 16:45

How can you possibly know this?

If you observe someone that you recognise as being trans well obviously, they don't pass. How do you know that countless other men and women that you see aren't actually TM or TW who do pass?
I dont know how we know. We simply do. Its millenia of instinct. Its survival, it's not a thing you can describe.
At times I have just known seconds before hand that something bad is going to happen to me. at times I have known by some sense that something bad is happening to someone else in the vicinity. When you walk in a room and can cut the air with a knife? You know something is wrong, but not what.
Its similar to knowing that a person is evil. Only had that a couple times and no idea if I was right, but I got out of the sodding way in case I was caught up in it.
I can look around a room and fairly easily tell you who is the rapist, who is the wife beater, who is the drug taker, who hates children, who dislikes animals, who is a control freak etc. Only need a few minutes. My life could depend on this information and certain types of people try to hide what they are, with varying success. But it's just a veneer, and men trying to do woman is just another veneer.
Aside from the fact they rarely have any idea about women so dont know how to do it.

LordProfFekkoThePenguinPhD · 25/09/2019 16:47

Did I say no one? Not sure did but if I did then scratch that and add ‘very few’.

LangCleg · 25/09/2019 16:54

But you can only say that no one passes if you've seen a statistically large enough group and have correctly identified the TM and TW in a "blind" test.

Oh get a grip. There are endless studies on sex recognition, both including and excluding opposite "gender" hair styles and suchlike. Human beings recognise sex perfectly well. It's an evolved ability.

And guess what? Women are better at it than men. Could that possibly be because it's an evolved risk assessment tool because men pose risk to women in ways that women don't pose to men? Heaven forfend. Who coulda thunk it?

We're not in a fever dream. It's the real world. Where sex is real and everyone knows what it is.

Tyrotoxicity · 25/09/2019 16:56

Cleverer people than me have spotted some parallels with the trans interpretation of queer theory and religion. Now I'm seeing more and more parallels.

Thanks for the link, wacademia - I'd be interested to explore this angle.

The patriarchal ideology has had many variants over the years. They're all much of a muchness, just told in different words.

Once you realise we're all indoctrinated into our local iteration of patriarchy, going back over the religious texts is quite illuminating. Even just reading the first couple of pages of the Bible with your DARVO goggles on.

The link address makes me think - "religious trauma" isn't just felt by people indoctrinated into a recognised organised religion. I bet I'll find my father's insistence on the supremacy of atheism reflected in there. He denies all gods while expecting to be treated as the supreme authority on what's true and what's inexplicable and what's irrelevant and what's wrong. Fucked me right up.

(Thankfully he also established Pratchett as a Wise Man, which means I can fully accept and believe it when MrsTerryPratchett tells me "holy hell, he's awful, run away!")

DecomposingComposers · 25/09/2019 17:04

Dangerfloof
How can you know what you don't know?

I could say that I can always recognise a drug addict, but how can I be sure? I might recognise certain physical or behavioural signs that might well be obvious in some addicts but not every addict will exhibit these. There will be other functioning addicts who show no outward signs. I will have no idea who these people are and so my bias will be confirmed. I will be confident in my ability to accurately spit a drug addict but in truth I can only spot those who show obvious signs.

LangCleg · 25/09/2019 17:07

but in truth I can only spot those who show obvious signs

Yes. Of being male or female. As the multitudes of sex recognition studies, including those that obscure "gender", show.

Give it up.

DecomposingComposers · 25/09/2019 17:20

How did they "obscure" gender in the studies?

How statistically significant were the results, given that even if people guessed the answer it was only ever going to be 50/50?

And exactly how evolved are human beings at identifying sex in people who have taken steps, be they hormonal or surgical, to disguise it? Given that it's only been medically possible within the last 50 or so years we won't have evolved to overcome it.

You think that you can always identify a trans person. I would not presume to be so presumptuous.

BickerinBrattle · 25/09/2019 17:22

The male skeletal structure is completely different to the female skeletal structure, and those differences can only be somewhat corrected for by surgery. The differences manifest in facial expression, gesture, movement, and silhouette.

Since humans evolved to spot predators visually more so than through any other sense, we take in details as a whole, and even if we can’t say why, like cats, we notice when our eyes spot something “off.”

Male faces have a brow ridge females don’t have, and the jaw is shaped differently. Male features have a different proportional separation as well. These differences manifest in facial expression.

Male shoulder joints are angled differently than female shoulder joints, and this affects gestures with the arms.

Male torsos are proportionately shorter than female torsos, while male arms are proportionately longer than female arms, and those differences manifest in entirely different silhouettes, an effect that will made larger if the surgically implanted breasts atop the male skeleton are large.

Male hands and feet are much larger than female hands and feet, and those differences will be readily apparent in any action involving fingers and hands and, for feet, while walking.

The male gait is different from the female gait because the pelvis is angled differently.

The shoulder-to-hip ratio is completely different, and this is noticeable in silhouette.

Unless expensive vocal cord surgery has been performed, a male speaks in a completely different register to a female voice.

It takes both extraordinary surgical effort and extraordinarily good luck in having been born at the end of the bell curve in which these skeletal differences are minimised, to counter these differences.

LordProfFekkoThePenguinPhD · 25/09/2019 17:26

And a great photographer, lighting artist and photoshopper.

BickerinBrattle · 25/09/2019 17:34

If only we all lived in 2-D!

DecomposingComposers · 25/09/2019 17:35

BickerinBrattle

But some of those characteristics are dependent on inherited traits - body size, height for example.

Some can be altered with surgery. Facial feminisation surgery for example.

Other differences will only become apparent after puberty. If people take puberty blockers will they ever develop an adult male skeleton and therefore larger hands, feet, arm length, jawline and the like?

HumberElla · 25/09/2019 17:50

And exactly how evolved are human beings at identifying sex in people who have taken steps, be they hormonal or surgical, to disguise it?

It is extremely difficult to disguise sex. Human beings use more senses than just eyes and ears. One of the least evolved parts of our brain are those related to sex recognition. It is so fundamental to our existence that sex is hardwired in every cell. Disguise and evolution really doesn’t come into it.

DecomposingComposers · 25/09/2019 18:02

HumberElla

So what are these indicators that are so difficult to disguise?

It's quite difficult to differentiate between pre pubescent boys and girls so if you arrest puberty how does that alter sex differences?

LordProfFekkoThePenguinPhD · 25/09/2019 18:09

I’m not sure what happens to a body on puberty blockers and you can’t stay on them indefinitely. I’m sure it doesn’t suspend you in an eternal childhood state or change your sex.

LangCleg · 25/09/2019 18:15

How did they "obscure" gender in the studies?

I've already told you. You're in denial.

They put gendered accoutrements such as hair style and make up onto faces. Then participants were asked to sex the faces. Sex recognition was consistent. And women were better at it than men.

Like I say: not a fever dream. The real world. It doesn't matter how many threads you filibuster on, human beings will retain the ability to recognise sex.

LordProfFekkoThePenguinPhD · 25/09/2019 18:16

We are just animals after all. Hairless apes.

LangCleg · 25/09/2019 18:17

I see another thread about to go to forty pages of endless repetition.

MNHQ should really get to grips with this.

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