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!

Hi lurkers

I still consider myself a lurker. I think I might be kidding myself.

I always find the term ‘trans girls’ peculiar as girls are females who have not yet experienced puberty. The term hints at ‘trans age’ even though ‘trans age’ is supposedly a ‘red herring.’

@DickKerrLadies

Hi lurkers

I still consider myself a lurker. I think I might be kidding myself.

You could perhaps just identify as a lurker?

For example 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. Or not buy a book or art that they liked that they then found out was by a trans person.

What an incredibly offensive and bizarre thing to say.

But fair enough, you seem to be here specifically to offend. The trouble is, it's a complete and total misunderstanding of what women are complaining about.

90% of us - probably more - couldn't give a flying fuck how anyone identifies, chooses to dress, live their lives etc.

We just want our single sex spaces. To ourselves.

Women just want to define ourselves, discuss our rights, and protect our rights. About top of these is the right to say no.

It's not about transwomen. It's about women.

The complete apparent inability to understand, empathise and respect women is probably the thing that makes you least likely to 'pass', to be honest.

You could perhaps just identify as a lurker?

Tis a fluid concept anyway.

Asking disingenuously what communal changing rooms are, and professing bafflement and disgust that they exist, is another staple of twitter.

They then follow up with accusing anyone who has concerns about communal changing rooms of being a pervert, because only a pervent would go somewhere with communal changing rooms. Even though that means every single man and woman that goes swimming at the local council leisure centre is now a pervert.

In fact, it means everyone in the county who swims competitively at a county level is also a pervert, because the local leisure centre is a location for swimming galas.

@DickKerrLadies

Hi lurkers

I still consider myself a lurker. I think I might be kidding myself.

You definitely are (kidding yourself)

I did like this from you earlier, when you definitely weren’t lurking:

But here we have it though. For all that we're told that of course biological sex exists and of course no male person actually says or believes they are actually female and ohh aren't we silly little ladies for getting ourselves all hysterical over wanting to be able to define ourselves, there it is. A complete and utter refusal to accept reality.

Yup. No reality interfering with that person’s dedication to just making it up as they go along!

Might as well say “I can’t imagine how it feels to be a woman, to be a person who inhabits a biologically female body, who grows up and moves through the world in that body, whose life choices and expectations are impacted by that body, who is socialised a certain way because of that body. I can’t imagine and I can’t be bothered to even try, because I don’t care.”

That’s what I hear.

Asking disingenuously what communal changing rooms are, and professing bafflement and disgust that they exist, is another staple of twitter.

Weird. What's the point? I've also noticed the other staple is unequivocally passing and not really being interested in sex. I don't get it, to be honest. You'd think, under those circumstances, writing self interested reams to the women here, would be a bit pointless.

It's the only way they can think of to deal with the Stanisland Question. It's as neat a piece of Darvo as ever a shout of "No, you are!" could be.

Imagine having the gall to appropriate 'female', as a male. Such entitlement, as if the material reality of half the planet is yours to grab.

YY. Perfectly put.

That’s what I hear.^^

Me too.

I always find the term ‘trans girls’ peculiar as girls are females who have not yet experienced puberty. The term hints at ‘trans age’ even though ‘trans age’ is supposedly a ‘red herring.’

Completely coincidentally I was saying the exact same thing to DP earlier.

Earlier on on this thread this question was posed:

Can’t we just say there are women born with female biology and there’s some women born with male biology. Just as most men are born biologically male but there are some men born with female biology?

Wouldn’t that solve things?

In the subsequent pages, has anyone felt reassured such a line, once drawn, wouldn't be rubbed out? That the word female won't be redefined to suit some parties?

The word female is already being redefined constantly and the desire to re-write reality means that rather than things being 'solved' they are simply 'obscured'.

Asking disingenuously what communal changing rooms are, and professing bafflement and disgust that they exist, is another staple of twitter

I'm not entirely sure what is meant by a "communal changing room". I haven't been in public swimming pool for at least 20 years. I used to go to the private one at my son's school up to about 10 years ago. The single sex changing rooms were not communal. It definitely was not the case that women were walking around naked. If that is what is meant by "communal changing room" I wouldn't use one.

A room, possibly with lockers on one wall, and some benches. Some have separate individual cubicles in which to change in privacy, but others don't. Off to the side will usually be a shower room.

Depending on the age of the building, these may be communal showers, so just showerheads poking out of a wall, or a set of separate private shower cubicles.

It’s like the changing rooms in most budget gyms all over the country. Toilets on one side , showers enclosed, lockers, space to change in.

I have no gym option that doesn’t have this set up.

Council run pools tend to have changing villages- all lockers and plenty of staff wandering about to make sure you’re only changing where you should but I’ve never been to a gym where there’s enough cubicles to change and I’ve never seen gym staff in the changing rooms keeping an eye on things.

So yeah, they’re not some weird anomaly it’s a fairly standard set up. And if you’ve had a shower how do you get dressed without being seen naked? And even if you do the towel dance, you can’t expect everyone else to.

So it’s communal changing room or no gym round here.

Most gyms I have been to have communal changing rooms. I haven’t been for about decade so I had thought, because of twitter that communal change rooms were a thing of the past. Or just at schools.

In fact, the only ‘gym’ I haven’t encountered communal change rooms has been those attached to a ‘health spa’. so Maybe they don’t have communal changing areas. i guess they might be encountered on their ‘girls’ pampering day out.

Council run pools tend to have changing village

Some of them do. There are four pools within driving distance of us and all of them have open plan female changing rooms with a small number of private cubicles. Most women (and their children, if they're with them) have to get changed in front of other people. Bags on the bench and then into the lockers. This is especially true before kids swimming sessions when they're busy and there's no chance of getting one of the few cubicles.

I've worked in Central London for years. It's really, really common for people to go to the gym.

The changing rooms tend to be divided into sections, surrounded by lockers with benches. If you're lucky, on a quiet day, you might have a section to yourself. However, at certain times of the day, it's incredibly busy and the sections are full. Most people do change quickly and discreetly - not everyone: some women are very confident - but yes, there is nudity. The showers aee usually in cubicles, but not necessarily ones that lock. There tend to be gaps above and below the doors.

I don't love communal changing rooms, personally. I actually go to the gym that is less popular with my workmates to try to avoid ending up in a situation where we are changing with each other.

However, it's not some obscure little issue that only affects a few exhibitionists. Have a wander around the big cities (in particular) and look at the number of chain gyms.

As for the point that 'some women can have male bodies', Positrans has already said they are female as well as a woman.
It would seem that both 'woman' and 'female' now include people with penis and testes.

In the subsequent pages, has anyone felt reassured such a line, once drawn, wouldn't be rubbed out? That the word female won't be redefined to suit some parties?

I think it has already starting to be rubbed out. And we can see how it is being done. I noticed this tactic as soon as the twatterati started on the ‘no silly! We never denied there was biological sex’ after things had gotten so bonkers and there are screen captures of them saying just that.

The next minute I noticed this ‘I was always this sex’ phrasing replaced it.

Like so many (but not all) doing the ‘no silly! Don’t be ridiculous. Wrong body was always a metaphor’. Yeah. Like fuck. And a child being told this or hearing this knows exactly that these people saying this are using a linguistic device and are not reporting their experience as fact? Yeah. Nah.

It is the inconsistency that is should be sending alarm bells. Women on the other hand, consistantly have maintained their boundaries. We are constant in discussing the protections of our already established rights and protections.

Like so many (but not all) doing the ‘no silly! Don’t be ridiculous. Wrong body was always a metaphor’. Yeah. Like fuck. And a child being told this or hearing this knows exactly that these people saying this are using a linguistic device and are not reporting their experience as fact? Yeah. Nah.

India Willoughby has speculated on the brains of mtf transitioners not receiving the same levels of testosterone in the womb as male infants (it's discussed in India's interview on Triggernometry.)

I have been told that there are differences in male brains and female brains and that the brains of transgender people more closely resemble that of their desired sex rather than their own.

The notion that 'brain in the wrong body' has always been a metaphor wilfully misunderstood by gender critical feminists just isn't true.

How can brains more closely resemble the brain of the opposite sex if we can't sex brains ?

I did read that there is an area of the brain that grows /changes in response to trauma. It tends to get more developed in women, no surprises, and is more developed also in post surgical transpeople. It may also be more developed in other people who have had major surgery but that wasn't looked at.

There is no evidence that it indicates sex, just trauma , although the people who published the paper did need to publish a correction to make this clear