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?

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?

What does 'being transgender' mean to you?

Extinction: The Dodo is extinct. The Thylacine is very probably extinct. The Tiger may be headed for extinction in the wild outside of zoos and
fenced reserves. That is extinction.

When the Red Panda was reclassified as a genus in its own right and not a type of racoon, no pandas were harmed.

No. Same as if I dye my blonde hair brown I'm not literally a brunette, i just appear to be one. I'm still an actual blonde all over my body.

Yep! Not entirely sure that was what was intended 😁

@Thelnebriati

No change is needed these days, no hormones or surgery. Surgery renders a person infertile, and thats considered to be a human rights abuse.

Yes, that's true.

However, one of the shibboleths around which the dominant narrative has coalesced is the urgency and necessity of "trans healthcare", which means various levels of cosmetic and hormonal treatments to emulate aspects of the opposite sex.

So the ideology, while accepting that medical intervention is not a necessity* , nevertheless believes for some trans people it is necessary and important and they should have access to it.

So the question for @RainbowSpunk was simply, why do bodies and sex presentation need to change for anyone if it's just which verbal labels one wants to use?

• on this I agree. No one has the "wrong" body, our bodies just are, and we'd do better widening the definition of both man and women to accept people as they are in the bodies they came in. Where we differ, of course, is exactly how they need to widen - one side says Men and Women are fixed personalities so need to widen to include any body type, while the other says Man and Women are fixed bodies but can include all personalities

@AdaFuckingShelby

No. Same as if I dye my blonde hair brown I'm not literally a brunette, i just appear to be one. I'm still an actual blonde all over my body.

Quote fail. This was in response to the OP saying if you have a 'sex change' you literally change sex.

If self ID is really about what you feel, why is it so important to have so much validation from others, especially women? I can’t help feeling that there is something more sinister going on and it hasn’t a lot to do with us (except in a negative way)

Yes, quote fail in my last post too!

I must remember I'm on my phone/ the app!

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

No. You can't change sex, only gender. That's why transgender people prefer to be called transgender, not transexual.

If gender, sex and womanhood are all just social constructs doesn't it follow that transgender is also just a social construct?

What if you moved to Italy and acquired Italian citizenship? That would make you Italian, wouldn't it?

Yes if you followed the specific requirements set out in Italian law. You couldn't though just identify as Italian and get an Italian passport, though of course if you want to announce you identify as an Italian that is your prerogative, as long as you don't expect your maroon passport to to arrive.

Much like you can identify as whatever gender you like. As long as you don't expect the legal and social framework of the country you live in to change as a result - you are still the sex you were identified as.

Your analogy does work though so well done!

Do stop with the logic.

Tis tiresome 😁

I used to go along with "trans women are women" until the prison issue and realised that there were no true single-sex spaces any more.

Someone asked "if a government/ political party/ company board etc was made up of 50% men and 50% trans women (bear in mind being a trans woman requires no physical changes other than to declare your are a woman) would you consider that gender equality / sex equality (whichever matters most to you)?"

I could not honestly answer that I would, which shows that to me there are fundamental differences between trans women and born females in some respects.

Woah! The delay between my posting and being able to see them is getting longer. Sorry, it has broken up the flow of discussion a bit.

l'll have to ask MNHQ if my posts are being premoderated 😊I'll pop over to site stuff now!

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?

Plenty ? Really?

Could you link to the plenty please

@CuriousaboutSamphire

You do know you are making a bloody good, logical case against transwomen being women, don't you?

Presumably you don't mean me? Because I don't think I am am I?

Although a PP said my gender is female because that's what I self-identify as. I don't agree with that. I am a woman because I am not because I have chosen to be.

The "Idea of being trans" is Platonic. It is out there.

Official, and particularly legal, recognition of transgenderism is something many people would argue we could do away with to the general benefit of society.

The law does not recognise there is such a thing as clairvoiance, and quite right too because they are all liars, frauds or delusiional, IMO.

@RainbowSpunk in relation to the Italian analogy you said "Why not? Learning the language, successfully applying for citizenship... What more is needed?"

How about applying your theory to race? If someone is born in a black neighborhood, adopts black culture, is seen as am honoury "black brother" by his peers does that make him black if he identifies as black?

If you can identify as a different sex why not identify as a different race/nationality/age/height? What is the difference?

Quote: “You are born of either the male or female sex class, you can never change this although you can take hormones and have surgery to appear as if you are the opposite sex to which you are born.”

Disagree. Why not? Surely if someone is running solely on oestrogen and has has surgery so they are anatomically female, maybe look totally female, then they are - to all intents and purposes - a woman.

Sure, they can’t have a baby or a period, but not all women do. And on a day to day basis, in terms of leading a normal life, those two things aren’t absolutely essential to be a woman (at least I hope not)..

I just don’t understand the ‘impossible’ argument, right down to granular level. Chromosomes for example. How many times in your life has someone either checked them or demanded proof? All the things you point to as evidence of it being ‘impossible’ seem to be ideological, and pretty irrelevant to someone leading a normal life as who they really are.

No Frederica that wasn't for you.

That was an unfortunate combination of issues with the app... Not being able to quote a post that already has a quote and the interminable delay between my posting and it appearing.

I don't have a gender. I am female.

I don't have a gender identity, I am me.

I don't support gender ideology as I believe ideas about femininity and masculinity as defining characteristics are harmful to us all - read up on toxic masculinity if you haven't come across it before.

I've actually got no issue at all with the idea that society might want to introduce a new, entirely non-sex-based set of classifications for people who want to express something they feel is an important aspect of themselves that would not otherwise be recognised and call it gender, and for people to organise politically and socially around their chosen gender to agitate for whatever rights, recognition and support they feel they need.

To the extent that gender may express aspects of personality that have to date been socially constructed around sex, I think it would be good for feminism as well.

What I can't get on board with is this slight of hand where on the one hand gender is supposed to be entirely separate to sex, but in practice is being used as a substitute for sex, and so instead of two separate types of classification either of which may be more relevant depending on context, the practical use of sex as a relevant human classification or source of social difference is being taken away altogether.

No one has yet explained to me how it is that things that were single-sex and set up for female people based on female needs turn out to be magically exactly what's needed for the mixed-sex gender of women as well.

Sure, they can’t have a baby or a period, but not all women do. And on a day to day basis, in terms of leading a normal life, those two things aren’t absolutely essential to be a woman (at least I hope not)..

No. The reasons that a woman may be infertile or unable to have a period are sex specific.

A man can’t have a period simply because men don’t have periods.

A man cannot become an infertile female. All that is possible is simulation of a feminine appearance with cosmetic surgery and hormones.

Your example is also almost irrelevant because few trans women have extensive surgery, not to mention the fact that many trans women have fathered children.

All the things you point to as evidence of it being ‘impossible’ seem to be ideological, and pretty irrelevant to someone leading a normal life as who they really are.

On a day to day basis most people don’t ‘live’ as male or female. They just live as humans. Sex doesn’t matter all the time. However, the consequences of having been born male or female are ongoing and unavoidable.

Most women will have given birth, most women do have periods. Menopause happens. Women need sex based rights.

Sure, they can’t have a baby or a period, but not all women do. And on a day to day basis, in terms of leading a normal life, those two things aren’t absolutely essential to be a woman (at least I hope not).

They are not essential to being a woman, but much of the sexism built into society has at its root an assumption that most women will do these things. Therefore, being born in and living within the female body carries an inescapable social load that being born in and living within the male body doesn't.

Changing your body in later life to be a facsimile of the female sex without having lived inside the social construct from the moment your personality started to develop is not an interchangeable experience.

I think that load is significant enough to be a meaningful differentiator and since it is unescapably linked to the sex of the body, that makes the sex of the body also meaningful until such a time as we have managed to dismantle those sexist constructions.

I just don’t understand the ‘impossible’ argument, right down to granular level. Chromosomes for example. How many times in your life has someone either checked them or demanded proof?

Are you saying you would need to chromosome test someone before you could correctly sex them? In face to face interactions I imagine it's vanishing rare that people can't correctly identify someone sex. It's on that basis that interaction takes place.

A transwomens experience of life will be completely different from the way I experience life as a women. They can never know what it's like to be a women in the same way I can't know what it's like to be a transwomen or a man