Re-writing of history - what exactly is trans?

[Siameasy]

So we are now to believe that:

Playing with “opposite sex” toys isn’t anything to do with being trans
Being born in the wrong body isn’t anything to do with being trans
Trans women never actually said they were actual women
No child was ever pushed down the affirmation route, had body parts cut off or was put on puberty blockers
No fish-like lobby group ever had anything to do with schools ever

Surely there’s blood in the water now?!

If this is not about being in the wrong body why are we offending people by using Woman and why on earth is everyone going arse over tip to use cervix havers, chest feeding and any other batshit words.

I am so confused I think I need to go have a lie down

I am so confused I think I need to go have a lie down

If only we would lie down, roll over and not ask difficult questions

Playing devil's advocate... If we forget for a minute bad actors who may dress up for sexual gratification, or in order to get access to locker rooms, or to compete at a much easier level, etc.

I think there might be people who experience a very strong sense of kinship towards people of a certain sex... and this sense of kinship can be incongruous with their own sex. And this can cause them grief (especially if they feel a strong sense of "not kinship" towards people of their own sex)

For instance: a very "feminine" lad who just gets along a lot better with girly girls, and feels repulsed by stereotypical manly man behaviour (possibly has been abused by such manly men).
Or a very laddish lass who would rather be one of the guys, and has been conditioned to feel that typical feminine behaviour is inferior and despicable (and even that the women who exhibit such behaviour are inferior and despicable. I.e. very strong internalised misogyny)
These people have a strong mental image of what it means to be a man/woman, and they don't like it, and they feel more affinity towards "the other side" (of which they have a stereotypical idealised view).

All these feelings can be real. They are less common than the opposite feelings of "a man feeling strong sense of kinship towards other men (and looking down at women)" or "a woman feeling a strong sense of kinship towards other women (and not really trusting men)", but they can exist.

I don't think any of these feelings are particularly "good" or even "special" (people get "tribal" about all kind of characteristics, not just sex/gender)
That's just how I currently understand this "inner gender feeling thing"...

And I also think that for a lot of people... This "inner gender feeling thing" doesn't even exist! E.g. because we think of ourselves as "humans" and "individuals", and all other categories feel mostly irrelevant, unless they become an axis of external oppression...
And even then: I'm a sexed individual, it is my undeniable reality, others may use this fact against me, but it doesn't define me, and I don't identify with my oppression.
... In other words: some people's sense of self is very much based on the "peer group" they identify with, and how well they fit in, whereas for some others, the concept is largely alien ("I am me, no matter what the world says or thinks")

Obviously it's meaningless. Therefore it should be up to individuals to believe it if they want but it must have no place in education, laws, etc

Wise statement, @nauticant

It's exactly what Ms Rowling said:

Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?

It's ineffable. Apparently.

I think there might be people who experience a very strong sense of kinship towards people of a certain sex... and this sense of kinship can be incongruous with their own sex. And this can cause them grief (especially if they feel a strong sense of "not kinship" towards people of their own sex)

it is always interesting to explore all angles in this - I think the 'kinship' idea could have had merit if the people we see (presumably there are others we don't see that could be demonstrating that behaviour like Dr Hayton for example) actually demonstrated even a tiny ounce of kinship - the consideration for women's feelings and needs, a non-violent approach to resolving dispute, being ready (and often first) to put our own needs aside to help others.

The differences in body language have been apparent on the recent zoom meetings we have seen where the women behave seriously and professionally and wouldn't dream of constantly flicking their hair and giggling yet the other people......

so, great to consider that point but I can't agree. I think we need an announcement to give us a proper definition as I am absolutely stumped.

@FloralBunting

There's a strand of Christian theology known as Apophatic theology, whereby God can only be defined by saying what he is not. It's a bit head melty, and the idea is that you're talking about something almost completely beyond human comprehension.

Which is fine in metaphysics because you're talking about abstract, unprovable concepts of divinity.

If you're using apophatic methods to describe exactly why you are not actually male or female, and thus should have things ordered to your required parameters, not so much.

Some people treat Buddhism as an apophatic system. Precisely because there are some things that are not possible to put into words, or in fact are obscured by words. It's an experiential realm, and this is where ideas like 'the gateless gate' and so on come in; using language to point at what isn't.

But in Buddhism it's also made pretty clear that there are 'two truths' - this philosophical, beyond-languge, beyond-description realm; and the garden variety of truth in which we have to live, discourse and use language. People who confuse the former truth with the latter end up very confused - this is when your mind is so open your brains fall out, as the saying goes.

Kaiserin, I thought that was interesting, as you are suggesting there that it's about other people, which to me seems a possibility - how we relate to those of our own sex. It's at least tying it to embodied reality. We all know that there's no such thing as 'feeling like a woman' other than biological feelings like period pain, etc. The rest of it is stereotypes. So I get confused when people say they identify with this shifting miasma of invented cultural tropes. But I can visualise what you're saying better.

For instance: a very "feminine" lad who just gets along a lot better with girly girls, and feels repulsed by stereotypical manly man behaviour
Still not a woman though.

At the end of the day, gender dysphoria must suck, for whatever reason it arises
(let's pretend for a moment sexual kicks never comes into it). But men with gender dysphoria who go about the name change and "living as a woman" and all the plastic surgery under the roof, are still men with gender dysphoria. Not women.

What is trans?

I thought it was, and always has been, someone who feels a mismatch between their sex and their gender. Which is beautiful for the $$$ makers, seeing as virtually everyone on earth feels uncomfortable adhering to all the sexist stereotypes based on their sex.

I'm sure it's very easy to convince someone suffering any level of insecurity that they're trans and make a lot of money out of them.

someone who feels a mismatch between their sex and their gender

That's what I used to think but the more I've reflected on the fact that suffering from gender dysphoria is not a requirement for someone to be trans, it's made me realise that it is purely internal identity issue. For which some then seek external validation.

That is, if you're talking about the trans umbrella rather than solely transsexuals.

At this stage, its looking like not much more than a new religion.

Of course, meanwhile transsexuals do exist, and continue to require (some anyway) medical help for their condition. But they are not trans, nope. They are 'truscum'.

I thought it was, and always has been, someone who feels a mismatch between their sex and their gender. Which is beautiful for the $$$ makers, seeing as virtually everyone on earth feels uncomfortable adhering to all the sexist stereotypes based on their sex.

Well exactly. If you feel a mismatch between your sex and gender, that's because society's 'gender' expectations of your sex are bullshit, not because there is something wrong with you.

There is nothing objective whatsoever that says that dresses, makeup, pink, glitter, high heels are only for people with a vagina.

It isn't someone who is born in the wrong body (and how 'dumb' we were to take that one literally apparently!)

Yes they say that and at the same time they're saying how essential modified bodies are to the trans experience...

Because of the leisure time the quarantine offered me I have spent a lot of time educating myself about trans issues (hence why I am now here, heh).

One interesting thing I have learned is that transgender people themselves and those who have desisted or detransitioned give more than one explanation for why they wanted to transition. The bottled version the activists give us is not the only fairly common one, though that is the only one I ever hear from politicians and organisations like Mermaids.

Though dysphoria is probably the most common explanation (and truly agonising and awful, it seems), not that many state that they felt they were the other sex from an early age (though perhaps that is taken for granted).

And many women/girls who detransition mention past sexual trauma, misogyny, porn and homophobia, including being bullied for being Lesbian.

Boys/men who detransition also mention homophobia and bullying for being gay, and both fairly frequently refer to very rigid ideas about how men and women should behave while either stating that they failed to perform those rigid roles adequately or that they don't want to perform them.

So there's a sense in which all that hopeful loosening of gender stereotypes in the 1990s, say, seems to have vanished among the young.

I was also struck by how quite a few very young individuals spoke about short hair as something that means man and about dresses as something that means woman, which, to me, tells that children and teenagers really are not mature enough to understand gender.

Then there are the quite sad explanations from some boys/men who later detransitioned about how they felt that girls/women have an easier life because they are sexually desirable by definition and can get sex whenever they want, and because they get cosseted and loved and because they can express emotions. All that sounds like yet another example of believing in very rigid gender rules of behavior.

And those things have come up time and time again with the detransitioners nepeta. And with many of us who have felt similar unease growing up. Yet the lobby groups pushed for affirmation and set kids on the pathway to medication and sadly in some cases surgery. Even tho many had the surgery as an adult the scene was already set by affirming them as a child.

Stealth

I think now we have more implied permission to say a lot more things out loud than we ever have

Give it a couple of days and see if that gets deleted.

Kaiserin
I don't think any of these feelings are particularly "good" or even "special" (people get "tribal" about all kind of characteristics, not just sex/gender)

This really resonated. "Tribal" is exactly how it feels.

I have had the experience of being at the wrong end of a football ground in the 1970s, realising that everyone around me was in red and white scarfs and mine was blue and white. And I have had the experience of being at a weekend event with a thousand or so people who all seemed to have drunk the koolaid and TWAW, and not been able to have a conversation with any person I hadn't known for forty years (and not many of those) in case they would condemn me for some unthoughtout word that showed me to be an evil terf.

The former was frightening, the latter hurt.

"What exactly is trans?"

Well I know what I think it is but we've been silenced from talking about it for so long

Gender dysphoria in some - which is a mental condition and deserves psychological help - not having a delusion validated by legislation.

Plus the unmentionable. Cannot believe people wanted to legislate for that!

I'm not sure saying trans = gender dysphoria gives us any answers. In the 19th century, one of the few ways abused women could express their distress was via a variety of symptoms called hysteria. Gender dysphoria is a 21st century version of hysteria - a way of expressing internal psychological and emotional distress.

Yes true, GD may be linked with trauma and if there’s a rush to affirm rather than explore what trauma could be missed (think someone’s mentioned this elsewhere)? Particularly if there is distress at their body. One of the detransitioners in the Times article said exactly this.

Anyway we are now told that trans is anything and you don’t have to have GD

Back before this fashion, there was definitely one of people in their early teens thinking they "didn't belong here" and might be aliens really.

(I am not joking.)

And there are all the Harry Potter and earlier stories about children who didn't fit into their families and were then discovered not to be part of that family at all: The Tough Guide to Fantasyland has an entry called "Missing Heirs", and it's a staple of the genre.

I suspect that a lot of children are discontented with their lot in life; being a child is often frustrating and less than ideal, and it just gets worse when you hit puberty.

In the 19th century, one of the few ways abused women could express their distress was via a variety of symptoms called hysteria.

My understanding of hysteria is slightly different, that it was a term invented by a society not tolerent of a woman's normal emotional reaction to a situation. It was a useful term (useful to men) used to dismiss a woman's valid concern or outrage in order to paint her as mentally ill in some way rather than listen to her.

But that's a bit of a tangent.

I remember all the "cool girls" at school were anorexic/bulemic (1990’s). Now all the "cool girls" are trans.
It's definitely the latest angst expression in adolescents.