New to the debate

[Frederica852]

Started hearing more about issues around women's rights and transphobia lately and am slightly mystified by all the labelling of people's view and aggressively calling people phobic etc etc

Trying to make sense of it. Clearly a nuanced issue but there are some key points that are beginning to take shape in my mind E.g.

• biological sex is male or female. You're born one or the other and can transition if you wish during your life.
• gender is becoming a separate concept from sex so you can be biologically male but identify as female and vice versa.
• gender is a tricky concept because it's hard to work out what it means without getting into old fashioned stereotypes.
• some don't believe gender is a thing and there is only biological sex
• some people think the people in the point above are transphobic.

For my own part, I was born female and therefore I am now a woman. I don't know what gender identity really is. I am a woman but I like football and boxing and I hate wearing dresses. I don't think that makes me a trans man. That said I'm fine with others feeling a strong sense of gender identity and identifying as a different gender to their biological sex. Live and let live and all that

Am I getting the basics at least?

biological sex is male or female. You're born one or the other and can transition if you wish during your life.

You cannot, you can have surgery to make you appear more like a man or a woman, but this does not magic you into the opposite sex, it's impossible.

@Thelnebriati

Gender identity is self declared, but the rules of gender are why people think they belong to one gender more than the other.

What are the rules?

Nope, there are plenty trans and non-trans women alike with "masculine" interests. And this doesn't make either of them any less of a woman.

The biology of one of those groups will very definitely make them not a woman, their hobbies and interests are irrelevant.

@Frugblie

biological sex is male or female. You're born one or the other and can transition if you wish during your life.

You cannot, you can have surgery to make you appear more like a man or a woman, but this does not magic you into the opposite sex, it's impossible.

Sure if you have a 'sex change' you literally become the other sex?

@CuriousaboutSamphire
Many here say things like "I am female, have short hair, fix engines and wear trousers. Does that make me male?"

And trans people keep trying to tell you no, it doesn't, because that's not what gender identity is, but alas, acknowledging what trans people are saying to you would deprive you of a convenient strawman to bludgeon trans people with.

@TurquoiseBaubles

You mean women?

The word that is actually being driven to extinction?

No one is getting rid of the word "women",, you're just angry it's not being used to refer to non-trans women only.

But what is a 'gender identity'?

How do I know what mine is?

You do mean women.

You know you mean women

We know you mean women.

But you just like adding the unecessary qualifier to see how hard the bites are

Well, we've all seen it lots of times before. OP may not have though, so thank you for helping show just how illogical this crap can get!

Sure if you have a 'sex change' you literally become the other sex?

No, the fundamental things that biologically make us female or male cannot be altered by surgery, or fully replicated by taking drugs. There is some creepy talk about researching transplanting wombs, but when science and medicine can't be arsed to look into things involving said organ that adversely affect women such as endometriosis I find it insulting. That won't change all of the differences even as we don't fully understand them all.

At a high level sex is science, gender is social. In my opinion there are definitely circumstances and situations where science overrides social desires.

@NancyDrawed

But what is a 'gender identity'?

How do I know what mine is?

It's whether you use feminine, masculine, or gender neutral labels to describe yourself.

Do you call yourself a man, a woman, or neither? Depending on the answer, that's your gender identity.

Oh dear! That reads very badly, OP. It reads exactly like some of the persistent monitors and agitators we get here a lot. So you might get some strident responses.

But stick with it.

First and foremost you are going to have to explore that.

How do human beings change sex? Can you explain what you understand by that?

"That gender identity is a matter of your sense of self, defined solely by how you self-identity"

@RainbowSpunk this is your definition of gender identity? It's how you self-identify? That's tautoligical.

It's like saying a horse is whatever I say a horse is.

“Driven to extinction”?

How so?

“OMG someone tweeted #adulthumanfemale and I don’t think I’ll last until morning!”

@Kittii

"That gender identity is a matter of your sense of self, defined solely by how you self-identity"

@RainbowSpunk this is your definition of gender identity? It's how you self-identify? That's tautoligical.

It's like saying a horse is whatever I say a horse is.

Gender is a social construct. Much like nationality. What makes you, let me guess, "British", other than the fact that this is the national identity that the people living on these islands came up with?

[quote RainbowSpunk]@CuriousaboutSamphire
Many here say things like "I am female, have short hair, fix engines and wear trousers. Does that make me male?"

And trans people keep trying to tell you no, it doesn't, because that's not what gender identity is, but alas, acknowledging what trans people are saying to you would deprive you of a convenient strawman to bludgeon trans people with.[/quote]
Oh do acknowledge the whole post. You know full well that the straw man was set up by you in this instance.

It is utterly disingenuous to use only part of a response to make your point - as so many Twitter twats show only too often.

Try an honest exchange.

But Rainbow, to a large extent how I define myself is irrelevant if others define me differently because of what they see, and because of our cultural norms. That's the rub.

For me, the two crucial difference between That said I'm fine with others feeling a strong sense of gender identity and identifying as a different gender to their biological sex. Live and let live and all that and what is happening on the ground right now are

1. the dominant narrative about trans identities has moved from people living "as if" they were the opposite sex, (which yes, typically did boil down to adopting the social stereotypes plus for some, surgery) to "Trans women are women, trans men are men".

The implications of that are:

Women experience sexism not because they are female and society reacts to their bodies in a certain way regardless of how they may feel themselves as a person, but because they are a certain type of person, a "woman".

A male person's experience of "womanhood" in his imagination while living a life where people react to him as a man is as authoritative as a life lived in a female body and treated from birth as a woman.

There's no material reason for single sex anything unless it's entirely a body-based difference (ie medical or reproductive). So women's sports, education, changing spaces, political representation, employment initiatives, anything being done to address historic social, political, cultural and economic inequalities between women and men must become mixed sex to include males who identity as women as equal and interchangeable with female people.

Surgery or any type of physical transition is not a pre-requisite for a trans identity, because the identity is innate and separate to the body. The penis is only male when attached to a person self-defining as a man. Penises attached to male women are welcome in women's spaces. This means separating women and men no longer protects women from rape because some women can rape others.

Statistics that are intended to show sex-base trends and patterns will now include male statistics. This risks hiding female-specific trends and patterns where female representation is very low (for example sex crimes, political leadership) and male representation is very high.

Any discussion of the systemic impact of biology on women's lives - for example expectations and structures around child rearing and domestic responsibility on our economic power over our lifetimes, our physical ability to defend ourselves against male violence, the narratives structured around our bodies in media and in porn - gets taken out of any discussion about feminism and what women need in our society because "not all women have wombs, not all women have vaginas". Which would be ok if alongside recognising that Women is now a mixed-sex group, we had created a new social group for female people and transferred all the single sex protections and analysis over to it. But we haven't. So TWAW has effectively unnamed and undefined female people as a group despite the undeniable oppression and inequality we have experienced and continue to experience.

2. "Trans people are who they say they are" AKA self id

All the above would be ok (ish) if there was some sort of objective test or gateway that had to be passed to be accepted as a trans woman (or man). But there isn't. It's being framed as transphobic to even ask. The narrative on the one hand appropriates DSDs and "science" in the sense of research into non-human sex groups, subtleties within human (mostly secondary) sex indicators and development to claim that innate trans identities are "proved" by science and anyone questioning that is a science-denier, but on the other hand resists any suggestion that there could be an objective way to prove trans identities.

Which in effect means the right to participate in women's opportunities, speak as a representative voice of women, enter women's spaces and define women's experiences belongs to any male who wishes to appropriate it.

And even all of that wouldn't matter if this was just (as it is for men) an academic topic. But through lobbying and the tag-teaming of this very specific narrative about trans people onto LBG rights as trans being some sort of "LGB 2.0", (1) and (2) have become the dominant narrative of trans identity and through that, the definition that is being pushed when equality schemes, laws and charters are being defined. Since women are an oppressed/disadvantaged group, how we are defined in these things matters in a why it does not matter to men.

And that's why it matters.

😆 wrong audience for that to work.

@Deliriumoftheendless

“Driven to extinction”?

How so?

“OMG someone tweeted #adulthumanfemale and I don’t think I’ll last until morning!”

Plenty GC people openly stated that they want to put an end to the very idea of being transgender. What is that, if not extinction?

I'm British because I was born in England and have British citizenship, as evidenced by my NI number and passport. I can't decide to identify as Italian just because I love Italy and wish I could speak Italian.

But calling myself a woman and being referred to as 'she' is just using the English language, surely?

Genuinely, I still don't know what a gender identity is supposed to be.

@Konyeshno

But Rainbow, to a large extent how I define myself is irrelevant if others define me differently because of what they see, and because of our cultural norms. That's the rub.

Then correct them. That's what trans people do.

"Nope, I know I mean cis women. And I know you insist on strictly rigid, binary, "sex-based" labels because you're a bioessentialist, transphobic, gender-enforcing bigot."

That was even quicker than usual

@NancyDrawed

But calling myself a woman and being referred to as 'she' is just using the English language, surely?

Genuinely, I still don't know what a gender identity is supposed to be.

I've explained it to you. It's more that you refuse to accept the explanation.