What broader issues has the trans (lack of) debate opened your eyes to?

[FredFlintstonesTunic]

For me, it's really exposed how large media platforms (i.e., a few very rich and powerful people) can shape public perceptions (e.g., by blocking, shaming, nudging and belittling certain ideas and/or people, and promoting others).

I'm no longer so quick to dismiss other people's unusual opinions, or to label them "conspiracists" without looking as openly as possible into what they're talking about (including from sources associated with intelligent people not necessarily in the mainstream media). I don't trust Wikipedia (or Urban Dictionary) without question (which I shouldn't have anyway, but...). I have more respect for people who are willing to say unpopular things (e.g., left-wingers who don't like the EU). In general, I'm far more likely to take news stories with a pinch of salt.

Anyone else?

But to believe that, they have to believe that there is a part to being male or female other than the physical, biological aspect. As do you, no?
No.
Biological sex is a fact not a belief.
We have no way of sorting out which aspects of the gender hierarchy behavior stereotypes are nature or nurture, because we have no record of life outside the dominance/submission paradigm that permeates all aspects of our lives.

TehBewilderness My question was to Justhadathought, who was explaining her belief in Jungian archetypes. I don't believe there is anything to being male or female other than the biological aspect.

Goosefoot I think problems happen when patterns are mistaken for more than patterns. So, for example, there is a pattern associated with motherhood, and we will all recognise stories based on that. But I personally think that when we start talking about that pattern as a Jungian archetype, we end up confusing matters, and talking about it as if it has causal power beyond that which it actually has.

They believe there's something else - something that makes them essentially male or female (or non-binary, etc). But it seems like Jungians believe in that too

Well, yes, Jungians would perceive/detect archetypal imagery/ archetypes which are active in the human psyche......but that is not the same as 'identifying' with those archetypes, or 'being' those archetypes.

When you identify with something archetypal you tend to be 'taken over' by it. It possesses you; and for that moment you are almost a divine/perfected incarnation. This can sometimes manifest as a form of madness - totally alienated from earthly reality. Contents of the psyche can possess you ( very recently watched a very interesting documentary on the serial killer Ted Bundy on Netflix).

Jung was very much about sublimation...where human instincts and urges transmute into divine or 'higher' drives - towards 'individuation' and the spiritual. His teacher, Freud, would have seen these drives in a far more instinctual/physical way. The drives originate from the body, from biology, from the instinctive urges. I'm imagining Freud would have seen transgenderism as a malfunction or adaptational difficulty?

A woman is a an adult human female. Although an adult human male may well be fixated on, or possessed by, or identified with, female/feminine archetypes (for a time).

But to believe that, they have to believe that there is a part to being male or female other than the physical, biological aspect. As do you, no

I would honestly say that the feeling of 'essential femaleness' arises through an intense involvement with the female body and its biological processes. So, for example, when I was younger I kept a menstrual/ovulatory diary ( A We'Moon diary). I noted my patterns; my deep urges; my dreams; my 'instincts', at different parts of my cycle. I noted my periods of creativity; my periods of withdrawal and so on.......This connected me to a larger, deeper 'feminine' power and experience, very much rooted in the body.

Likewise the experience of pregnancy and giving birth. The experience of sexuality and sexual response in a female body. For a woman the experience of the female is primary. It is elemental. It is not in any way a sublimation.

My question was to Justhadathought, who was explaining her belief in Jungian archetypes. I don't believe there is anything to being male or female other than the biological aspect

Yes, but that aspect is profound. Likewise for men living in a male body.The body is not just an add on. It is the root of male and female differences.

I don't want to be purposefully unkind and lacking in compassion.....but for a man to say he is a woman, or that he" identifies as a woman", would be like me saying I was Indian or identified as Indian ( even though White European) - because I loved yoga; followed a guru; and loved everything ( well, a lot of things, anyway, about Indian culture and society). I could live in India; learn the language, but I would still to a large extent be 'other'.And I must add that I think sex differences are probably far more powerful & rudimentary than racial/national/cultural differences.

I think you're over complicating what motivates most AGP males.

Mermoose
Sorry, I got mixed up.

I think problems happen when patterns are mistaken for more than patterns. So, for example, there is a pattern associated with motherhood, and we will all recognise stories based on that. But I personally think that when we start talking about that pattern as a Jungian archetype, we end up confusing matters, and talking about it as if it has causal power beyond that which it actually has.

It's mean to give us a language to talk about things that are difficult to discuss otherwise.

I think maybe you are imagining a sort of separate existence for the archetypes, but really they are completely united to our physical and material reality. The archetypes don't cause sexed bodies and all the manifestations of that, rather, they exist because our material reality is as it is. And that does happen within certain parameters. We are all men or woen. We all have mothers. We all begin as children and have to be cared for. We all begin knowing little and learn from our elders. The language Jung developed was meant to let us communicate about and understand our own experiece as the kinds of animals we are.

One of the things the Jungians are typically quite concerned about is people using the archetypes as what you might call identities. These types are part of who we are, but we sometimes choose to wear them as masks, and can begin to believe they are who we are and that's it. We then depend on that for our sense of self and security, but it isn't stable - you aren't a whole person this way. People also hang these types on other people, you see your mother perhaps, or your wife, only through this archetype of motherhood, which no one can live up to and isn't enough for anyone.

So it's not about some sort of effort to make yourself fit a pattern.

To go back to the OP, "What broader issues has the trans (lack of) debate opened your eyes to?"

The fact that men are, and must be, accepted very easily in whatever they say they are; and that women are, and must be, what men say they are.

I believe there's a rule of misogyny about that....

OccasionalKite quite right I think I derailed the thread there. Apologies.

To go back to the OP, "What broader issues has the trans (lack of) debate opened your eyes to?"

Patterns & dynamics of narcisstic / coercive control.
Once recognised & then understood it can be life changing (if rather scary to recognise the prevalence & impact)

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3452784-Coercive-Control-a-need-for-better-awareness

I think you're over complicating what motivates most AGP males

I never once mentioned or referred to AGP males. I was explaining the mechanisms, as best I could, of Jungian archetypes.....as they relate to male/female, feminine/masculine.

One of the things the Jungians are typically quite concerned about is people using the archetypes as what you might call identities. These types are part of who we are, but we sometimes choose to wear them as masks, and can begin to believe they are who we are and that's it. We then depend on that for our sense of self and security, but it isn't stable - you aren't a whole person this way. People also hang these types on other people, you see your mother perhaps, or your wife, only through this archetype of motherhood, which no one can live up to and isn't enough for anyone. So it's not about some sort of effort to make yourself fit a pattern

Very well put, as usual.......Yes, identifying as an archetype is what often occurs in disordered mental states. But also true that we all tend to project our own unconscious content and archetypal patterns onto others; onto key people in our life. We get attracted ( for better or worse) to an intuition of what pattern that person represents for us.

Justhadathought perhaps it would be a good idea to start another, separate thread about how Jungianism relates to ideas about male and female and femininity and masculinity? I feel a bit bad for starting that discussion because I think it's derailing this thread.

frithluton.com/articles/the-animus/: Quite an interesting link which explains what lies behind the concept of the anima and the animus.

I never once mentioned or referred to AGP males.

Yes I know.

To go back to the OP, "What broader issues has the trans (lack of) debate opened your eyes to?"

This debate brought me to feminism, and I delight in it having been largely responsible for the feminist upsurge of recent years.

It has led many women to analyse the damage done to women and girls by transgender theory and by Choosy choice liberal feminism.

It has led many women to analyse the damage done to women and girls by transgender theory and by Choosy choice liberal feminism.

If your shiny new feminist analysis starts with trying to suss out what's going on with trans activism and how it got the traction it did so quickly I think it's a pretty easy and intuitive jump from there to taking a clear eyed look at all the sex work is work and empowering/sexualizing yourself via providing selfies for randoms to wank to is also empowering/basically dick pander as hard as you can and it will bring you power and happiness, somehow stuff.

A TRA called @12thGuelph made a facetious comment on Mumsnet that trans people should wear a purple triangle. The comment was deleted but not before it was screenshotted and circulated widely as 'this is what people on Mumsnet think'. Just the other day I saw a TRA on Twitter, who probably believed what they were saying, claim that 'Mumsnet wants trans people to wear purple triangles'.

No matter how often this false flag action is debunked as being false flag, there are those who will not forward on the correction because it suits their agenda for the lie to be perpetuated. It's dishonest, appallingly so, and shows these people for the liars they are.

No matter how often this false flag action is debunked as being false flag, there are those who will not forward on the correction because it suits their agenda for the lie to be perpetuated. It's dishonest, appallingly so, and shows these people for the liars they are.

The same is true about the false claim by Emma the MN intern that "Mumsnet are calling for a new section 28"

Emma Healey failed to read/ understand a post properly, cutting it out of context to construct a false narrative. It was shared & believed by many, including politicians.

Just as yesterday MPs Nadine Dorries, Lucy Allan and Maria Caulfield passed on a clipped part of interview with Keir Starmer which constructed an entirely false narrative:
www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/14/labour-urges-tory-mps-to-admit-keir-starmer-video-was-doctored

To go back to the OP, "What broader issues has the trans (lack of) debate opened your eyes to?"

Apart from the numerous other things already noted on this thread, it was the realisation of how so many men are led by the desire to orgasm. And how the blanket, and inescapable, prevalence of porn is teaching them to become aroused by the degradation and humiliation of women. To such an extent that they want to be that woman.

Ray Blanchard, a man who has studied transsexualism for the best part of 30 years, calls AGP a target location error and appears to have a great deal of sympathy for AGP men, and HSTS men.

Although he asserts that the reasons for transition are always sexual, he never seems to take into account the women for whom it's damaging.

His understanding and sympathy appears to be solely reserved for men who become aroused by women's humiliation.

He has studied the phenomenon for 30 bloody years, why hasn't it turned him into a raging feminist?

Apart from the numerous other things already noted on this thread, it was the realisation of how so many men are led by the desire to orgasm. And how the blanket, and inescapable, prevalence of porn is teaching them to become aroused by the degradation and humiliation of women. To such an extent that they want to be that woman.

This is one of those once you see it you can't unsee it things. RE Blanchard, my assumption would be that it's bros before everything coupled with the fact that his focus is on what he thinks is best for his patients to such an extent that he fails to notice when what's best for them is what's worse for everyone else. Which predictably hasn't stopped TRAs from attacking him and his family (the stuff some American TRAs wrote about his then very young daughter was just vile).

I know, it makes it all the more frustrating. He has direct experience of TRA fury and outrage, and has documented it under narcissistic injury I think.

For such an analytical man, it always shocks and depresses me that he doesn't see the damage to women. I don't know what's worse, that he doesn't see it, or that he does but doesn't care. To me they're almost as bad as each other.

Surely an analysis spanning decades should take into account the underlying societal reasons and impact.