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?

those two things aren’t absolutely essential to be a woman (at least I hope not)..

Let’s have a closer look at what women need to avoid having a baby.

They need access to contraception and possibly an abortion.

They need robust laws on rape including rape in marriage.

Absent other rights, the only 100% reliable form of contraception is the right to space that doesn’t include men.

What do men need to avoid parental responsibility? Feet to walk away.

When I was at university in Scotland, many years ago, there was a student there who really really wished he was Scottish. He changed his name to his idea of a Scottish one, took Gaelic classes and wore a kilt daily. Absolutely no-one thought he was Scottish. He was German and everyone referred to him as such. No amount of effort on his apart to appear Scottish changed how people perceived him.

I also find myself unable to answer "in what way is a trans woman a woman"? without resorting to things I find unconvincing (stereotypes, arguments about femininity, etc).

If a male person has felt and thought a certain way then by definition that is not a purely female feeling/ thought.

Nobody would rightfully have any problems with people living as they want to, whilst doing no harm. Trans, agender, asexual, whatever.

Personally I don't have a gender and I rarely think of myself as female. Only when brooked for no other reason than I was born female do I remember that I am not just 'me'.

What I can't get my head round is why anyone can posit, in all apparent sincerity, why does it matter?

With all the threads on the topic here, a space you choose to engage with, this specific, segregated part of the site l, and say something closely akin to 'it doesn't matter, nothing bad will happen and you are nasty if you object'

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.

As a slight aside:

Women don't run solely on oestrogen. Our hormone balance varies over our monthly cycle and changes again at menopause. I always find it deeply ironic that I'm most likely to post openly pissed off comments about the trans appropriation of womanhood as something equally open to males and of sex as an irrelevant physical detail when I have PMT

In the current medical world there is no surgery available that can make a male anatomically female. A female body is not just a male body with a recess instead of a penis, curvy fatty bits and boobs! It's an integrated, fully functioning system of bones, muscles, organs, nervous system, endocrinology, circulatory system, immune system and so on. All the bits of a human work have to work together to make that human work!

Thinking you can change a bit here and a bit there of a fully developed male human body to make it a truly female one is like trying to take a hatchback and weld in a bigger boot to make it an estate. It might look a bit similar at first glance but the suspension is all wrong, the steering is messed up, the crash protection will be compromised, the engine might not have enough power...sure you might be able to make something roughly functional for some of what an estate car does but frankly you'll never have the same outcome as a car built as an estate from the start. And cars are way, way, way simpler than people!

One of the most insulting things I read in this context was the description of a certain type of neo-vagina as "fully functional". When I think of all the things a natural vagina can do I'm pretty sure there's quite a few this "fully functional" vagina could not do. And I'm pretty sure I know what "fully functional" really meant in that context, and therefore what the person who wrote it thinks the most important function of a vagina is

Are you saying you would need to chromosome test someone before you could correctly sex them?

It's also not possible to reliably distinguish cats and dogs without a chromosome test. But I usually get it right. (Touch wood).

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.

Yep, gender has to simultaneously be everything - an innate characteristic trumping even sex - yet nothing - unable to be defined or measured, and able to be fluid...

This is the stuff of religions, not laws in a secular society.

Day old chicks?

That's a skill!

I've been seeing "biological essentialism" thrown around again.

Definition of biological essentialism.

The belief that ‘human nature’, an individual's personality, or some specific quality (such as intelligence, creativity, homosexuality, masculinity, femininity, or a male propensity to aggression) is an innate and natural ‘essence’ (rather than a product of circumstances, upbringing, and culture). The concept is typically invoked where there is a focus on difference, as where females are seen as essentially different from males:seegender essentialism. The term has often been used pejoratively by constructionists; it is also often used synonymously with biological determinism.See alsoessentialism;comparestrategic essentialism.

www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095507973

As far as I can tell, trans activists are some kind of extreme "biological essentialists" as they seem to think specific personality characteristics are so strongly sex-linked that if you have those traits, it makes you the other sex, whatever the physical evidence to the contrary.

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.

'anatomically female' - what does that mean? Fake boobs, a cavity between the legs that goes nowhere and serves no purpose?

That's not what women are.

So if we took a bull, cut off its balls, and then gave it a fake udder, would it now be a cow?

Or if we took a horse and gave it a horn, is it now - to all intents and purposes - a unicorn?

Please explain

Sure, they can’t have a baby or a period, but not all women do.

I see PP have dealt with some of your other points, I'll deal with this one.

If a woman of 18 had never had a period they would be investigated to find out why. That is because it is usual for physically mature females to menstruate. If a woman was unable to conceive she would be investigated to establish the cause of her infertility and treated if possible. Whilst some women are unable to get pregnant most are.

There are no circumstances under which a transwomen would be investigated for amenorrhoea or inability to conceive; males are not expected to have periods or get pregnant.

On a single point of anatomical difference, the vagina is self cleaning and lubricating, a surgically formed neovagina is not.

@RoastChicory

So if we took a bull, cut off its balls, and then gave it a fake udder, would it now be a cow?

Only if you put a bit of lippy on her and told her how brave she is

I am really invested in all of this and have been following the growth of gender ideology in western society for years now. I keep an eye on what's happening on a near-daily basis and do what I can to fight the tide of this insanity. I read a lot about what's going on and I feel like I know my stuff.

But sometimes I get those moments...

You know the kind... when you're on a train and staring out of the window at everything rushing by and your eyes glaze over like you're looking at a magic eye picture, and suddenly you feel a sort of out-of-body, or extra-conscious realisation that everything is fucking weird. Existence itself seems to hang in the moment in a fragile bubble. You realise that everything is just atoms held together in the form of reality and it's unreal for a moment as the magnitude of an entire universe becomes clear to you right there and then...

And then you shake your head as though to clear the cotton wool from your brain and suddenly you're back to normal, never to achieve that strange meditative state again no matter how hard you consciously try to...

I get moments of realisation like that where I think "why the fucking fuck are we still even talking about this for fuck sake how much fucking mileage can we get out of the simplest facts of reality Jesus fucking Christ I'm so sick of it all!!!"

Then I shake the cotton wool from my brain and sign another petition and listen to another podcast.

Transwomen are not women.
Transmen are not men.

Ah the bliss if that could be the end of the discussion.

Squints really hard at magic eye picture.

I have autism but if I self-identified as neurotypical would I no longer be autistic?

@GromblesofGrimbledon - me too

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

Hormones are complex and intricate things. We all have various different hormones in varying degrees, and it fluctuates over our lives. It's really not like filling a tank with diesel or petrol.

And a male cannot by definition ever be 'anatomically female'.

A male can have plastic surgery to give an approximation of some female secondary sex characteristics. They will never have the sex organs of a female. They will not conceive and gestate a baby. They may grow extra breast tissue, they will not be able to feed a baby. Etc.

And 'to all intents and purposes' - well, no. To some intents and purposes, okay. For most things it doesn't really matter if we are male or female. But for many things it is pretty crucial. Heart attacks present differently in women than men, for example. Your risks of dementia etc are hugely larger if you are female than if you are male. Bones are different, blood transfusion can be an issue for males if the blood has come from females, etc etc. Obviously males and females have very different risk profiles for various illnesses and many health issues are sex specific - prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, etc.

www.news-medical.net/news/20171018/Blood-transfusions-should-be-gender-matched-between-donor-and-recipient.aspx

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2470289720948064

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1089/gg.2017.0003?icid=int.sj-full-text.similar-articles.1

The differences seen in the behaviour of males and females is primarily driven by the. Socialisation you received as a child

Which will be completely unaffected by hormones snd surgery

Which is why TW often appear male when writing in this forum , before they announce that they are TW many here have already guessed

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.
Not read the full thread but this is just the same old sexism, isn't it?
It's the millennia old misogynistic belief of male as default and female as other: defining us as non-men, non trans women. How the hell anyone looks at this nonsense and thinks its feminist is beyond me.

The word "women" is literally being erased from sanitary products, maternity services and women's health services in order to appease the TRA movement.

The words 'sex change' are entirely misleading. A transwoman may have had breasts implanted, may have undergone facial feminisation surgery, and perhaps could even have the penis and testicles removed, but a transwoman will still a prostate, for example. Women do not have prostates...

I think nowadays it is called 'gender affirming surgery' instead because 'sex change' is misleading - you can't change the cells in your body from male to female or vice versa

@midgemagneto

The differences seen in the behaviour of males and females is primarily driven by the. Socialisation you received as a child

Which will be completely unaffected by hormones snd surgery

Which is why TW often appear male when writing in this forum , before they announce that they are TW many here have already guessed

Indeed. On this thread I'd imagine there's at least one person many other posters have guessed the sex of.

@BlueBlazerBlack

I think nowadays it is called 'gender affirming surgery' instead because 'sex change' is misleading - you can't change the cells in your body from male to female or vice versa

But "gender affirming surgery" strongly implies that a gender (eg woman) has a specific type of body that matches it (eg female) which goes completely against the narrative that any gender can live in any type of body.