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!

The definition has now been stretched so it basically covers "any discomfort with your sexed body". Which, as all bodies are sexed, is not much different from "any discomfort with your body".

I think that’s a misunderstanding of the phrase Necessary. It doesn’t mean ‘discomfort with one’s body that is sexed’. Rather ‘discomfort with the sexed aspects of one’s body’. I.e. primary and/ or secondary sex characteristics.

I can’t prove it’s not there, but that’s a long way from proving it is.

Yes and that’s a fair comment. But for decades clinicians and researchers have proposed the existence of gender identity as an educated deduction. A reasonable hypothesis for something observed across centuries and cultures.

There is a lot of pseudoscience and patronising lecturing on this thread, but not much by the way of actual facts or any useful explanation of what it 'feels' like to be female. As Michelle says it's very familiar to those of us used to dealing with patronising men. I also note that any empathy whatsoever for females or any attempt to meet women half way is entirely missing, because complete capitulation is required.

@SophocIestheFox

Good question, delirium. If sex isn’t binary, what are the sexes that aren’t male and female and why do transwomen need to be included with women, if there are other options?

I think that’s a good point that should at least be considered by those who argue sex is a spectrum.

Would go against everything that is being said now, like, but the only consistency is inconsistency.

@Typesofcatalogue

I can’t prove it’s not there, but that’s a long way from proving it is.

Yes and that’s a fair comment. But for decades clinicians and researchers have proposed the existence of gender identity as an educated deduction. A reasonable hypothesis for something observed across centuries and cultures.

Gender non conformity, failure to adhere to sex roles and the creation of third sexes or category exceptions have absolutely been observed across centuries and cultures, but gender identity as a concept only emerged in the last couple of decades.

it would be unconscionable to use the pretext of science to enact policies that overrule the lived experience of people’s own gender identities

But you are requiring that we enact policies that overrule the lived experience of 51% of the population (women & girls).

Hypocrisy, much?

I think I'm done with this conversation, it goes nowhere productive and I find the paternalistic lecturing to be in experience the same as all other sex based patronising talking down to as if you're some stupid, emotional child that is so very common to hear from males when you're biologically female

Yes, I loved the patronising "Do your own research" when I asked for sources and references. When I examine PhDs, which claim an 'original contribution to Knowledge' I expect to see a bibliography & references. I don't expect to be told "Go find it yourself' when someone is trying to persuade me of the cogency and validity of their arguments.

I was thinking to myself, mansplaining ...

But it's a pity the rest of us won't have the joy of your wonderful thinking and succinct expression @MichelleofzeResistance - your posts are always so satisfying & informative to read.

but gender identity as a concept only emerged in the last couple of decades.

It appears very clearly in the psychiatric literature in the 1960s. Same could be said for autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

That human beings come in 2 sexes is not a belief but a fact . Single sex spaces exist because one sex is deemed to be dangerous to the other sex when they are vulnerable
Some humans believe that their sex does not conform to their perception of their self and choose to try to rectify this by modifying their behaviours and some by modifying their bodies. They are entitled to that belief. However they are not entitled to force others to share that belief nor appropriate rights of another vulnerable group.

people with a male body are incapable of understanding what it is to be female.

Male people who have altered their bodies/ faces enough to be successfully viewed as female can know what it is like to be treated as female, the good and the bad. Sometimes for decades. At least for some aspects. (Not pregnancy and menstruation obvs).

I know there is generally disbelief in the ‘passing transsexual’ here.

Why do you think there's been a push over the past few years by trans activists to say that people are trans without needing to have gender dysphoria?

Transvestites exist.

@Typesofcatalogue

but gender identity as a concept only emerged in the last couple of decades.

It appears very clearly in the psychiatric literature in the 1960s. Same could be said for autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

Ok, I’ll qualify that: gender identity as a concept that means someone should be treated such that their gender identity supersedes their physical sex only emerged in the last couple of decades. The protected characteristic identified in 2010 in the UK was gender reassignment, not gender identity. The concept that a trans person literally becomes the opposite sex is that recent.

It feels like everyone's missed the really obvious point about this proposed sex spectrum - there are two of them.

A male spectrum (of which Positrans is an example) and a female spectrum.

This idea of a single line marked m at one end and f at the other is a) ridiculous b) offensive and c) bollocks.

Plenty of variation within the female spectrum though. Boobs and no boobs, endometriosis and absent periods, deep voices and high ones, massive hands and dainty feet, fertile and infertile, identities including but not limited to woman/enby/transman, and so on ad infinitum.

Male people who have altered their bodies/ faces enough to be successfully viewed as female can know what it is like to be treated as female, the good and the bad. Sometimes for decades. At least for some aspects. (Not pregnancy and menstruation obvs).

Being treated as female is not the same as being female and as most of our oppression results from our perceived reproductive role not having to bother about menstruation and pregnancy is a pretty big advantage
No male can understand what it is to be female and no amount of wishful thinking can make it do.

@SophocIestheFox

I think the “biological underpinning” is a result of a fudge between there being a biological reason for people perceiving themselves as being of the opposite sex, and a biological reason for that actually being physically true. The same way that there are parts of the brain that look like they correlate to religious feeling, but that they exist doesn’t do anything to prove that god is real.

There’s a flaw of perception in some people relating to their sense of self that might be biological, and some people are jumping forward with that as representing a chunk of female-ness in a male body. It’s really not. Also, the studies are not particularly great, as I understand them, and don’t account for brain plasticity. Nobody’s proved that any of this is innate.

Quite.

Interestingly, there was a study done of trans people who are also identical twins, and in the clear majority of cases, the other twin wasn’t trans. I don’t know how much more closely biologically aligned you can get than identical twins, so that debunks the whole “it’s biological” guff for me right there and then.

But, you know, even if it were true - even if there were some biological underpinning to this erroneous sense of self, what difference would it make? Those of us who are biologically female should still have the right to define ourselves independently and exclusively of all biologically male people, if we aim to be a society that cares about human rights, because of the sheer extent of male oppression, control and abuse of females throughout the centuries, throughout the world. And because of the immutable physical differences between the sexes that leave female people inherently vulnerable relative to male people. And because truth and reality matter.

You're trying to narrow humans down to 2 sexes based on gametes. Sex is way more complex than that.

Michelle is right. There is nothing to be gained by engaging further with this person, who is prepared to flat out deny what “male” and “female” mean, who is prepared to flat out deny what “sex” means.

Sex refers to the categories, female and male, into which human beings (and most other living things) are divided according to their reproductive capacity.

That’s it. That’s literally all it is. Which gametes you produce, or will produce when you’re older, or used to produce, or would produce were it not for a medical disorder or illness of some kind.

The fact that some people are born with the incredibly rare (about 500 cases recorded worldwide) disorder of ovotestis in no way leads to the conclusion that an unambiguously biologically male person is therefore entitled to appropriate the name of “woman” and violate women’s boundaries in every way possible, as trans activists are intent on doing.

In fact, given that the majority of those born with this extremely distressing condition are female (and will moreover most likely suffer from infertility), the attempt to exploit their condition as a gotcha is just another example of Positrans using female people as service humans to meet Positrans’ own needs and further Positrans’ own agenda. To wit, the erosion of biologically female people’s boundaries and autonomy.

The paternalism and male socialisation positively shine forth out of every one of Positrans’ posts.

The only thing I have left to say to Positrans is the word NO. No, we will not acquiesce in your attempts to colonise womanhood, we will not buy into your spurious, misogynistic arguments, we will not stop fighting this woman-hating ideology, whatever glib falsehoods you and others concoct to try and convince us of your moral right to oppress us.

No, I do not and will never agree that you are a woman, I do not recognise you as any kind of authority on “femaleness”, you have not convinced me of your integrity or good faith, I do not recognise your right to usurp and destroy my hard earned and fought for rights, I see no substance or truth in any of your arguments, not a single one of them, I am not going to play the game of pretending that you are doing anything other than exercising the 21st century version of male oppression of female people.

And I regard your oppression of female people as every bit as odious and as morally indefensible as all the other, more obvious, forms of male oppression of female people, and it is to be equally resisted and fought against.

You won’t listen to my “no”, of course, because you don’t have to - male power and privilege being what they are.

But you can’t pretend I haven’t said it.

positrans

Thank you for your response. I am glad you enjoy philosophy. Everyone does, I often think, although there may be some dispute about exactly what philosophy consists in.
I will try to clarify some points where I may have been unclear or misleading, and some where you may have got the wrong end of the stick. Let us try to simplify rather than obfuscate. I will not re-post what has been previously written; I hope you will be able to see where my remarks fit.

You do not need to be a brain-in-a-vat extreme sceptic to agree that your experience of the world may mislead. Theseus’ theme of ' The lunatic, the lover, and the poet …' extends to us all in appropriate contexts; that is the point of the bush that looks like a bear.
The point : often appearances mislead, and it need not be gaslighting to point this out when it occurs.

The example of anorexia shows the possibility of someone’s experience misrepresenting how things are with them.
The point : someone may be mistaken if they assume their experience always correctly represents how things are with them.

Someone who thinks she is Napoleon indeed thinks she is something other than she is. (The trans person does likewise, or not? Let us not beg the question by raw assertion one way or the other.)
The point : people sometimes think they are other than they actually are.

' I seem to be dead and alive at the same time '. [Ship of Theseus (or broom of Trigger , some prefer nowadays) is a red herring. No relevant issue about identity over time here.]
The point : if you think it seems to you that (insert contradiction here), you may be mistaken about how things seem to you, despite the general rule that how-it-seems is first-person authoritative .
[ Secondary point ? If your ‘philosophical approach’ leads you to think contradictions make literal sense, have a careful look at your philosophical approach. (I am assuming you are not Graham Priest; if you are, or if you understand this remark without looking him up, let me know and we may proceed slightly differently.)]

‘ The assumption that sex is a simple binary ’. Oh dear. Not really an assumption. It is just that everyone round here has exactly two parents (some still alive, some dead, none both). One mother, one father. No more, no fewer. Two. Like everyone else, my father was male and my mother female. (‘Male’: Designating the sex which can beget, but not bear, offspring. ‘Female’: Designating the sex which can bear, but not beget, offspring.) Is that binary?

But let us not get into all that. Others can have a go if they wish. My overall point was a more simple, weaker one, deriving from your remark about gaslighting and your experience of yourself.

It may appear to you that how you see yourself – your experience of yourself, if you like – is determinative of how you are. In other words, you may think that your description of yourself, particularly regarding your sex, is incorrigible. ‘Who knows better than me whether I am a woman or not?’ you might (rhetorically) ask, for instance.

I challenge this claim of incorrigibility, and suggest the possibility that others might be equally as well – or perhaps even better – placed in making such determinations.

In short, in the words of Oliver Cromwell, I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken about how you are with regard to your sex.

Only ‘possible’, note. I am not asking you to say you are mistaken. Rather, I argue for the mere possibility of error here. In ordinary everyday terms, and without descending into the likes of brain-in-a-vat or Cartesian ‘ hyperbolic ’ scepticism, is such a possibility something you can countenance? Why?

TalkingtoLangClegintheDark
Brava !!!!

Talkingto 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Interestingly, there was a study done of trans people who are also identical twins, and in the clear majority of cases, the other twin wasn’t trans. I don’t know how much more closely biologically aligned you can get than identical twins, so that debunks the whole “it’s biological” guff for me right there and then.

That’s a bit slack from you Talkingto What a spectacular misinterpretation of the evidence! You miss the significance of the findings.

Gender Identity Disorder in Twins: A Review of the Case Report Literature
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2011.02567.x
Conclusions. These findings suggest a role for genetic factors in the development of GID. Heylens G, De Cuypere G, Zucker KJ,

Transsexuality Among Twins: Identity Concordance, Transition, Rearing, and Orientation
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15532739.2013.750222

www.endocrineweb.com/professional/meetings/transgender-research-role-biology-gender-identity-development

The only thing I have left to say to Positrans is the word NO. No, we will not acquiesce in your attempts to colonise womanhood, we will not buy into your spurious, misogynistic arguments, we will not stop fighting this woman-hating ideology, whatever glib falsehoods you and others concoct to try and convince us of your moral right to oppress us.

No, I do not and will never agree that you are a woman, I do not recognise you as any kind of authority on “femaleness”, you have not convinced me of your integrity or good faith, I do not recognise your right to usurp and destroy my hard earned and fought for rights, I see no substance or truth in any of your arguments, not a single one of them, I am not going to play the game of pretending that you are doing anything other than exercising the 21st century version of male oppression of female people.

THIS

Male people who have altered their bodies/ faces enough to be successfully viewed as female can know what it is like to be treated as female, the good and the bad. Sometimes for decades.

These people are extremely rare.

That endocrine link is all over the place. Talks about dsds, then says that male brains in female bodies are possible, then one paragraph later says that brains are mosaics and that makes them non binary. Needs work.

I would point out that some people don't produce gametes, then you'll talk about the class who do, and I will say if you don't produce them, then your not in the class who do

What you are saying is that you fundamentally don't think there is such a thing as biological sex, because that suits your position. The only sex class of human bodies that can produce large gametes are female. And the class of human bodies that can produce small gametes are male. Both sets are required to reproduce. It really is quite simple. As someone said, within each sex class is a spectrum of physical characteristics and features and ability to reproduce. But at the moment of conception, 99% of humans have a clear pathway to their gamete production. The others have medical disorders of sex development.

You're indulging in sophistry, to prop up your ideological worldview.

That endocrine link is all over the place. Talks about dsds, then says that male brains in female bodies are possible, then one paragraph later says that brains are mosaics and that makes them non binary. Needs work.

It sounds on a par with most "science" TRAs fall back on.

I think the “biological underpinning” is a result of a fudge between there being a biological reason for people perceiving themselves as being of the opposite sex, and a biological reason for that actually being physically true. The same way that there are parts of the brain that look like they correlate to religious feeling, but that they exist doesn’t do anything to prove that god is real.

There’s a flaw of perception in some people relating to their sense of self that might be biological, and some people are jumping forward with that as representing a chunk of female-ness in a male body. It’s really not. Also, the studies are not particularly great, as I understand them, and don’t account for brain plasticity. Nobody’s proved that any of this is innate.

YY.