Welsh Government: Transgender people are people who are born as one sex but are the other sex

[OldCrone]

This is from the new LGBTQ+ Action Plan for Wales: easy read version

Transgender people are people who are born as one sex but are the other sex. For example, a person who looks like a man on the outside may be a woman on the inside

This is one of the documents for the current consultation about the new LGBTQ+ Action Plan.

I decided to look at the easy read version and the young people's version since the standard version didn't seem to have any kind of glossary about the terms used. The easy read version does, but some of the definitions, like this one, don't make sense. The young people's version, like the standard version, has no glossary.

In a consultation about LGBTQ+ people, the Welsh Government appears to be unable to define clearly what terms like 'transgender', 'gender identity' and 'non-binary' actually mean.

[EarthSight]

@OldCrone

If you look at the scope of the draft LGBTQ+ Action Plan alone the reasons to be more engaged and less dismissive are crystal clear. We ignore this at our peril.

On page 8:
"we will seek to devolve powers in relation to Gender Recognition and support our Trans community."

They want self-ID in Wales. If they get this as a devolved power they will do everything they can to make this happen.

Yeah.....anything they can to avoid sorting the much more difficult issue of holiday homes. No one wants to seriously touch that. All words, statements, but no action.

[WinglessSonglessBird]

to monsignormirth: yes i know some wouldnt want a no-body and i could see why, freaked out.

depends what you believe, but i was meaning like a spirit/energy with consciousness floating around--you could still see hear think emotions (think of angels, spirits, ghosts they only go in bodies to go by us but they see and know etc...just no physical aspect). You can have perception without the physical. Human perception is in reality very blind and deaf. Humans only see a small percentage of waves, and even then, we only see a very small fraction of what is called visible light. You would not be limited by your human prison. Quantum physics would put your mind in tizzy. What we call reality is ROFL a VERY tiny part of actual Reality. Humans actually don't know much.

Or,
in a robot body; you'd still think, see, hear but physically feel nothing (think of Data on Star Trek; in one episode he literally said "I'm not programed to feel pain)

Now are either of these possible? the being an ethereal conscious (you wouldn't be in a coma, you'd be you--think of like a ghost. Can move, perceive, the lot. Or your consciousness or brain or something in a robot body. Not that I'm aware of.

Though, people have out of body experiences. While in comas. It is the real them, or an aspect of it, just not in their body. Like that. But you'd interact with all the other "ghost" people. But woohoo no pesky bodies! You can focus on your emotional, mental, and spiritual development, graduated from bodies.

physical matter is only energy. a table is literally just energy. thoughts are energy. it's all energy. we are just obviously trained to have a narrow focus. Lots of scientists, spiritual people, and others will tell you the physical world is an illusion anyway. And if you believe in an afterlife and a soul/spirit, well...you have no physical body, so...

[WinglessSonglessBird]

also, the physical world is a very low-frequency energy. Physical matter is just waay lower energy. you are stuck in low frequencies in a body. emotions like love, joy, etc have higher energy vibrations, vs hate, fear which are lower. On physics level. thoughts are energy. many do not believe you need a body to be conscious and aware. If some think you do, that's ok. But that's what I meant. To me it'd be best to just be your spirit floating around. To some that seems bad. That's ok too. If people wanna be in their bodies I won't stop em lol! But I'd fly out and never look back tbh.

[TheWeeDonkey]

@Ritasueandbobtoo9

See ‘How to become a tyrant on Netflix.

That was fascinating wasn't it? I saw so many parallels. Get to the kids first, change language, control the media. Hmm very interesting.

[JayAlfredPrufrock]

G B Shaw covered the ‘just becoming a mind’ thing in Back to Methuselah.

I’m ashamed to say that every time we cross the Welsh border on our way to Anglesey we shout ‘He was the only gay in the village’

[Ides]

I think this is really about recognising basic human rights for transwomen - that they're people, rather than just collections of psychological problems; oddities, weirdos to be reviled, etc, etc. The policy's not going to bring civilisation down.

I have a friend who's a transwoman. She was treated so absymally in her home country that she fled, eventually ending up on the streets in London, begging. Even there, she was regularly abused by men and women alike.

I don't pretend to know what it feels like, to feel that one's body doesn't match one's gender. I have no idea. All I know is that it must be absolutely awful. That's why I'm on the side of making life a little easier for such people. It seems to me that according them basic human rights is the least we can do. YMMV.

[MonsignorMirth]

I don't pretend to know what it feels like, to feel that one's body doesn't match one's gender

In what way can a body match a gender?
One is a physical being, the other an undefinable feeling.

To insist that one has a matching partner of the other sounds a bit problematic to me.

[WinglessSonglessBird]

I think this is really about recognising basic human rights for transwomen - that they're people, rather than just collections of psychological problems; oddities, weirdos to be reviled, etc, etc.

I don't pretend to know what it feels like, to feel that one's body doesn't match one's gender. I have no idea. All I know is that it must be absolutely awful. That's why I'm on the side of making life a little easier for such people. It seems to me that according them basic human rights is the least we can do. YMMV.

Yes, this is how I feel. Minus the abusive TW, ones actively hurling insults and trying to erase women's safe spaces etc, the rest are decent people, just different in this regard.

And I wouldn't know how it feels either to not match my gender. Doesn't mean people don't experience it though. Who is anyone to say what someone is feeling, experiencing. It's pretty narrow-minded. Even though the internal gender feeling has yet to be defined in a good way, doesn't mean these people aren't feeling a massive disconnect between their bodies and internal gender experience.

WHY the outer body HAS to match the inner one, not sure. I've wondered this to. I think it's society's demands, internalized since young, tbh. Society is micro-focused on appearance, made worse I think by the internet, social media, so many cameras everywhere, media where everyone, especially girls/women, are scrutinized by what they wear, what the weigh, appearance stuff. So if you aren't matching your physical projection then something is wrong, in some's minds?? Even though, yeah, WHY do they have to match. It's cuz SOCIETY cares, which filters down and collects into individual minds of oh no I don't match, I'M the problem. ?? I get caught up in this, I do believe, though not not with the gender/body matching, thing.

Also, humans like congruency, probably on basic, primal level.

[Thingybob]

The easy read version is for people with a learning disability.

This is telling them that they can't know what sex someone is, and that they shouldn't trust the evidence of their own eyes and ears.

It's also telling them that people can change sex.

Gaslighting of vulnerable people.

Thank-you for making that point OldCrone. Can I add that someone with a Learning Disability is by definition someone with an IQ less than 70, i.e a person whose understanding and reasoning ability is below that of the average 7 year old.

Here's another resource (produced by Mencap) targeting that group

[MonsignorMirth]

So wingless and ides would you say that, for example, a "matching" pair of sex and gender would be "female" sex and "woman" gender?

Why? What is it that links a gender and a biological sex? They're referring to different things.

[WinglessSonglessBird]

to monsignormirth: I'm not sure. I see what you're saying. I'm thinking of the way it's more portrayed in the media, and by some public trans people themselves: that their body doesn't match their gender.

So to me, I guess I do assume that if your body doesn't match your gender then you have 2 different ones. So female sex and woman gender=matching in that way, yes.

Though, true, whose to say someone feels better with a male gender in a woman's body or vice versa

I took it the other way cuz that's how it is kinda displayed on the public arena. And why so many natal girls, for example, say they feel are male gender but their bodies are opposite. Or natal boys saying they feel as girls but their male body doesn't match.

If you were a natal boy and felt like a boy you wouldn't be trans would you? you would feel you matched. I suppose if you androgynous, or neither or both genders, your body wouldn't necessarily HAVE to match for that person to feel congruent with their self and body.

Good point.

[MonsignorMirth]

So what exactly is it about (eg) a woman gender (a non-physical feeling) that links it to "having a female body" while being something that is so entirely separate from the facts of "having a female body" (ie the physical stuff) that it can be present in either type of body?

Are we simply talking about "femininity"? But it'd be incredibly regressive to say "female body matches feeling of femininity", so I have trouble believing that's what a gender boils down to. But if it's not stereotypes or biological bodies, what is it?

[OldCrone]

[quote Thingybob]The easy read version is for people with a learning disability.

This is telling them that they can't know what sex someone is, and that they shouldn't trust the evidence of their own eyes and ears.

It's also telling them that people can change sex.

Gaslighting of vulnerable people.

Thank-you for making that point OldCrone. Can I add that someone with a Learning Disability is by definition someone with an IQ less than 70, i.e a person whose understanding and reasoning ability is below that of the average 7 year old.

Here's another resource (produced by Mencap) targeting that group

[/quote]
I find this targeting of vulnerable groups (children, people with a learning disability) with this idea that they all have a 'gender identity' quite sinister.

Especially when nobody can actually explain what a gender identity is (beyond regressive stereotypes) even to adults who don't have a learning disability.

[WinglessSonglessBird]

I know monsignormirth, I haven't figured that out either. I have no answers. I've only in past like 5 months had my attention drawn to this stuff, cuz before wasn't aware, and only ever thought in terms of: oh, someone wants to be trans, cool, up to them, I support em. Which I do, but just never thought about it. (and on a different, but related, note, never thought of some TW being "bad" and trying to take away women's spaces, which is what really got me thinking. I think I assumed if they were a girl trapped in a guy's body then they are more nice...mostly...like it's mostly the men who go around raping, etc.)

And yes, I've concluded a lot of this is stereotypes. Like girls=wear dresses, like pink, like makeup, quieter, nicer etc. And it is rather regressive. Cuz really it probably would be better if you could just be whatever you are but not have to put it in a gender category and then think that all has to match your body. If you like cars, trucks, math, boyish clothes and you're a girl, cool, you should just be accepted as you. Or vice versa with the guys. If a guy likes pink, dresses, etc why can't he just be a guy that likes "girly" stuff?

imo a lot of this is cuz society is, possibly even worse than decades past?, obsessed with image, with appearance. and also obsessed with labels and diagnosing everything from others down to yourself. I blame internet/media, society's sex and gender stereotypes (ONLY girls can like pink, for ex), and also the medicalization of society, and the even worse impulse to label every minute thought, emotion, action, usually in a bad sense (drs, big pharma, mental health fields faults). Everyone has to find out and scrutinize real hard to make sure they are "normal" in appearance, thought, emotion and if they stray or others stray one iota it means, usually, something is wrong internally and must label it and have 20 diagnoses for 10 different things, even normal things.

Everything has become pathologized imo, is some of this. And who benefits? follow the money: pharma companies, drs, mental health people, "professionals," scientists sometimes, politicians looking to use identity politics for gain or to purposely divide people which is a know tactic.

for example, instead of kids going through normal angst, and normal unpleasant emotions, now tons of em are just fobbed off with bunch of diagnoses and pills, which also does the disservice of never truly learning anything about yourself or your life, or anything else. Nothing to explore here, sonny, you just have broken systems, just take these pills and all is well. Or just be positive. Or just accept you have illnesses and plug along and keep that shit to yourself, society can't deal with broken people.

it's very sad.

[WinglessSonglessBird]

there is an agenda behind taking any group of any people and pathologizing it to the point they are either now subhuman, shaming, in need of all a bunch of "necessary" treatments and therapies, and ignoring the real underlying issues.

destabilize societies from within. cause people to shame even their own selves. get them dependent on the modern "health" medical and mental industries, for life. Probably power and money motivations, imo. Not that real people aren't suffering, but suffering is being made waaayy worse by society's supposed "help" with medical and mental health, and I think there is an agenda behind that. Not that most of the workers themselves are consciously doing this, mind you.

yes, it has been very sinister, the more I think or read on it. Not from this gender stuff, but I can somewhat see how all that has affected me, though I didn't see it especially when young. And not in a blame way to the exclusion of my own faults at all.

When people are down, either physically or mentally/emotionally/spiritually, they are weak in some ways, and we all know weak people are: vulnerable. often too tired/overwhelmed/distracted to defend themselves, often don't see underlying factors that have nothing to do with them; basically are easily able to be controlled, for whatever reason.

divide and conquer. If that means divide your target from within, even within their own mind, great. If you look at how dictators have risen to power and operated. How the CIA has operated for their various missions, the ones public know of, there are tactics both physical and psychological. Media and gov's do same thing.

Concept could be used for good, but it seems it often isn't. Like hey let's massively prime and sway and get the public to be kind to everyone. We'll do it on a subtle level, pull out all the tricks. somehow it's not often used for that.

the endgame to all this, if there's a deeper agenda, not sure, wouldn't know. Could be a paranoid thought, so could be wrong. However these tactics are known to be used by abusive individuals, cults, leaders, governments.

or society is just having a massive gender and sex confusion and it'll all work out eventually. Hard to say.

[WinglessSonglessBird]

who gains what from trying to get kids under 7 years old to even question their sex and gender? Is it really so they just understand themselves better, more than previous generations? It could be. Seems naive though. I'm cynical about some things, and it's a fact some humans want money and power to the exclusion of anything, even human rights and etc.

usually it's a matter of: follow the money. and/or follow who gets the most power out of it.

perhaps it's a misguided attempt to get kids to self-actualize and be ok with who the really are. Hopefully it's that, cuz that's easier to mitigate and see harms from and correct them, than an ulterior agenda.

and wtf kind of jerk demonic p.o.s. uses especially little kids, their psyches and their bodies, for some bigger agenda?

seriously, some nice aliens need to invade earth asap, abduct all humans, read their minds and genetics, and edit out aggression, anger, abuse, drive for money and power, drive for sex. Mindwipe em of it, and send em back. 50% of problems solved right there. If they have technology to share to get rid of toxic chemicals on the planet, we'd be mostly set.

[Wrongsideofhistorymyarse]

Talking of vulnerable people I remembered this crowdfunder from years ago. The mother of a young woman with Downs Syndrome who was ill in ICU was raising funds so the girl could have 'top surgery'.

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170220090227/gendertrender.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/aydin-olson-kennedy-msw-urges-gender-surgery-for-down-syndrome-child-in-intensive-care-unit/" rel="nofollow noindex" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20170220090227/gendertrender.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/aydin-olson-kennedy-msw-urges-gender-surgery-for-down-syndrome-child-in-intensive-care-unit/

dirtywhiteboi67.blogspot.com/2015/08/ftm-top-surgery-for-sky-tragic-story-in.html?zx=a6410c044ebad88d

[WinglessSonglessBird]

omg wrongsideofhistory that's messed up. Some people shouldn't have kids. It's one thing to be an adult and want to get surgeries and etc. Even then most people probably understand even themselves that there is a mental thing going on and this is their solution, good bad otherwise.

It'd be like doing that as a parent with a severely autistic person!

[WinglessSonglessBird]

it's possible this a huge medical experiment on the mass public?
goal? I wouldn't know.

if you think places/people are always ethical about stuff. ROFL! plenty of unhidden info about, for example, the CIA doing experiments on people without their consent. And that's just publicly known stuff!

[Ides]

"WHY the outer body HAS to match the inner one, not sure. I've wondered this to. I think it's society's demands, internalized since young, tbh. Society is micro-focused on appearance, made worse I think by the internet, social media, so many cameras everywhere, media where everyone, especially girls/women, are scrutinized by what they wear, what the weigh, appearance stuff. So if you aren't matching your physical projection then something is wrong, in some's minds?? Even though, yeah, WHY do they have to match. It's cuz SOCIETY cares, which filters down and collects into individual minds of oh no I don't match, I'M the problem. ?? I get caught up in this, I do believe, though not not with the gender/body matching, thing. "

I honestly couldn't conjecture even that far ... I don't think I'm equipped to do so. I honestly have no sense of being able to 'get inside the head' of a transgender person. As a result, all I have to fall back on are good old liberal notions of human rights and a general sense of 'OK, I don't get you, but I understand that you're human and I respect that, and if what you do doesn't harm me, we're fine'.

[OldCrone]

'OK, I don't get you, but I understand that you're human and I respect that, and if what you do doesn't harm me, we're fine'.

I agree with that, but what if it does harm me, or someone else?

I think it is very harmful to teach children that they have a 'gender identity' (something which is impossible to define), and if it doesn't 'match' their sex (how is it meant to match their sex, exactly, this thing which defies definition?) they need to have lifelong medication and probably surgical treatment as well.

[WinglessSonglessBird]

yes, oldcrone, I do think it is probably harmful to kids. Adults on the other hand I agree with Ides in how, I don't understand but that's ok you're still human and matter.

but the leading kids down a lifelong medical path, for one thing, doesn't seem right. We've seen this before though with kids put on psych meds. I was one of those kids put on them at a young age, for sadness and anxiety that I do believe needed exploring and not medicating away and framed as you are the problem with the broken brain that is the only reason, let's not look at this trauma you went through etc.

who benefits from a generation of kids so fucked up in their minds on a mass scale about their genders and bodies that they are so distraught, and then some transing and now lifelong medical patients, and many now lifelong psych meds takers. Literally the West is addicted to pills and I'm not being cute in saying that, it's horrifying, and I guarantee nobody is going to be feeling physically or mentally healthier sucked into a black hole of life-long medicalisation and pathologizing every minute everything to the point of even further madness, and down and down the rabbit hole we all go.

I still think this started with the boom in psych meds...70s? dunno, think prozac nation etc. I think the medicalization and pathologizing everything, even stuff that shouldn't be, has lead us to this gender/sex/body stuff, at least in part; it's a strong correlating factor, at least. You would never get pharma to even entertain the idea, mind you, but it still stands.

[JayAlfredPrufrock]

What the fuck is gender anyway? It’s a social construct.

[PrincessNutella]

What is a nonbinary trans person then?

[PrincessNutella]

How can an outer body not match an inner body? It's the same body all the way through. The parts are all integrated. They are made of the same DNA and work in a coordinated fashion. The same blood pumps through it, the air that is breathed in goes to the whole body, the food the person eat nourishes the whole body, illness that affects one part drags down the whole body. We aren't fucking turduckens. You don't stuff a human with an entirely different kind of meat. Nor do you peel off the zebra suit and find two men inside as entertainment for children. Human beings are living entities who are made of themselves.