Can someone please explain... (trans)

[WednesdayAllTheWay]

So I've been trying to follow this trans situation for a while but now having skin in the game in the form of a child (and also noting through work how more and more people are identifying as the opposite gender) I need to understand it better.
Feel slightly embarrassed asking but:

1. How exactly do the words sex and gender differ in this area?
2. What reasons do trans people give for wanting to change their physical bodies? As in what do people believe they will get from this that they couldn't get in the body they were born with?
3. What are children being taught at school about this?

Thanks!

I bet 90% of the users of this board would not offer a (non sex specific) job to a passing trans woman if they found out about their past subsequent to a successful interview.

Then you’d be as misguided in this assumption as you have been on others. Do you not think that there are professional women on this thread that do their utmost to hire the right person for the role? More misogyny showing here.

As long as the role was not designated as being for females only. Then of course, a male is inappropriate however they identify. And of course, you would know there is provision for this type of selection under the EA2010.

Why is it when people born male believe they’ve been born in the wrong sexed body do they always decide that their only option is to transition to female? It seems very binary when I’ve read (elsewhere and even just in this thread by Positrans) that there are many different sexes.

Why always choose ‘women’ and appropriate our lived experience?

Why so binary in their choice when there’s apparently a whole spectrum of choice available?

It’s a puzzle for sure.

@Positrans seeing as you've used the race comparison, can you please explain why transgender as a category is acceptable but transracial is not? Do you believe white people should be able to take jobs specifically designated for people of colour due to historical and ongoing discrimination, if they genuinely feel as though they are of that identity?

@Winesalot

Yes it is - "trans women" is two words. Same reason you don't write "blackwomen" or "Norwegianwomen".

Please stop using racist trope. just like this thread has highlighted just how much you have relied on using women’s fertility medical conditions and those with DSDs to explain the false sex spectrum.

You can't win an argument by banning the analogies that disprove your position.

@midgebabe

But trans woman means an adjective trans being applied to the word woman

Which is very very offensive to women

And is not at all the same as black woman, disabled woman, short woman, ugly woman who all share the noun woman.

On the plus side, even if you are conflating "trans" and "woman" into a single word, I heartened that you have included the word "woman".

Incidentally, it's only offensive to some women - there are millions of other women who don't find it offensive at all.

@titchy

Gender dysphoria can be extreme enough to cause someone to take cross sex hormones and invasive surgery for life. The likelihood that someone could just ‘deal with it’ enough to go into the toilets of what will feel like the wrong sex, is preposterous.

Except of course the vast majority don't take cross sex hormones or have any sort of surgery, so, yeah, they do appear to just 'deal with it'. Except when they want access to females.

This is a survey of 6450 transgender and gender non-conforming people:

static1.squarespace.com/static/566c7f0c2399a3bdabb57553/t/566cbf2c57eb8de92a5392e6/1449967404768/ntds_full.pdf

"Sixty-two percent (62%) of respondents have had hormone therapy, with the likelihood increasing with age; an additional 23% hope to have it in the future. Transgender-identified respondents accessed hormonal therapy (76%) at much higher rates than their gender non-conforming peers, with transgender women more likely to have accessed hormone therapy (80%) than transgender men (69%)"

@Positrans

I’ve noticed you have mentioned a couple of times you pass.

It’s like you are proud of that - does it make you better than other trans women or more entitled to use single sex spaces?

Surely on your logic passing is not important - looking and behaving in a feminine manner is
not what makes one a woman?

@Positrans

Judging by what you have asserted on this thread, I'm assuming you believe that male sexed individuals should have the right to use the communal changing rooms and showers as my teenage daughter?

Positrans
Can you stop posting surveys from the US. We're in the UK. Much of what happens in the US is irrelevant to the situation over here.

She's asking you to stop being racist. It's really not that hard.

The idea that "trans women are women just like black women" rests on subconscious racism: the subconscious idea that the default woman, the 'true' woman, is white.

If you haven't questioned this assumption (and many people don't- it's particularly a common argument from American trans rights activists on the internet), any other race of woman is other.

They other black women so much that black women and white transwomen seem equidistant from their own mental image of a woman.

So they make this argument.

The rest of us do not need to silently go along with this, and right here, in the feminist forum, we won't be having it.

This is a survey of 6450 transgender and gender non-conforming people

What do you mean by 'gender non-conforming people'? What does someone have to do to qualify to be included in this group?

I'm honestly astonished that 'gender non-conforming people' should actually be a descriptive term in 2020. Surely we're all gender non-conforming to some degree. Being totally gender conforming sounds like something which belongs in the Victorian era.

We are compelled to use the word transwoman here, posi. Other terms are not permitted - one can be deleted for using the term trans identified male (slurs rightly aren’t allowed).

@Positrans your analogy is racist.

Black women are women - born female. Transwomen are not.

221 pages! Wow.

I quickly flicked to the section entitled “cross dressers”, which represented 11%, or 702 of the surveyed population. All male. 32 % of them served in the military. 28% of them don’t tell anyone that they cross dress.

Are cross dressers trans, in your opinion? Do they change sex?

A black woman is a black adult human female.

A Norwegian woman is a Norwegian adult human female.

Adult human female = member of the human race which produces large gametes (ova)

In what way is a transwoman an adult human female?

You can't win an argument by banning the analogies that disprove your position.

Do you not understand how highly racist your analogy is?

@PotholeParadies

She's asking you to stop being racist. It's really not that hard.

The idea that "trans women are women just like black women" rests on subconscious racism: the subconscious idea that the default woman, the 'true' woman, is white.

If you haven't questioned this assumption (and many people don't- it's particularly a common argument from American trans rights activists on the internet), any other race of woman is other.

They other black women so much that black women and white transwomen seem equidistant from their own mental image of a woman.

So they make this argument.

The rest of us do not need to silently go along with this, and right here, in the feminist forum, we won't be having it.

Nicely put.

[quote Datun]@Positrans

Judging by what you have asserted on this thread, I'm assuming you believe that male sexed individuals should have the right to use the communal changing rooms and showers as my teenage daughter?[/quote]
No, but I think it's OK for trans women to use them.

@Winesalot

You can't win an argument by banning the analogies that disprove your position.

Do you not understand how highly racist your analogy is?

It isn't racist. Trans women, black women, white women, tall women, feisty women are all women. You've run away with a sample adjective in order to monster me. It's kind of a theme of this thread. In fact, I am surprised to have made it this far without being called a child abuser. I'm sure that's coming soon, especially when I tell you I have made generous contributions to the crowdfunders for trans kids to get puberty blockers.

It's all essentially an ad-hominem attack. It has no effect on me, and does nothing to dismantle my argument.

And I must say, I am very disappointed not to have received an answer to my previous question yet -

what traits are shared by all women and transwomen that are not shared by any men or transmen?

For the record re: giving a transgender person a job - I actually have no problem with people like Rose of Dawn or Blaire White. They recognise that they are biologically male who are more comfortable presenting as women. However, they seem to be realistic about what transitioning means and understand the limitations of what transition can do. There are also many pleasant transmen who are active on YouTube. I'd be happy to give those people a job.

My issue is with the erosion of women's rights and boundaries. Women have the right to their own sports, prisons and changing rooms away from biological males.

No, but I think it's OK for trans women to use them.

Presumably even those who have had no surgery? Naked male body,
penis, testicles, showering with naked female children. And you're ok with that? Can't see any problems?

It isn't racist. Trans women, black women, white women, tall women, feisty women are all women

Please could you replace the word 'woman' with your definition of it? E.g "black women, white women, tall women, feisty women are all adult human females "

@EdgeOfACoin

It isn't racist. Trans women, black women, white women, tall women, feisty women are all women

Please could you replace the word 'woman' with your definition of it? E.g "black women, white women, tall women, feisty women are all adult human females "

So am I.