Do we have it anywhere on record that Stonewall does/does not support people to express their sexuality as exclusively homosexual?

[JustcameoutGC]

The expectation that lesbians accept partners with penises was one of the things that really made me start questioning gender identity politics more closely.

Exclusively homosexual lesbian spaces have disappeared as viewed to be transphobic. Just look on any lesbian dating apps and many of the users are male and be-penised. Some may be fine with this, but all of my lesbian friends are not, and they feel very disenfranchised, but equally they feel unable to speak out. Just look at what happened in Manchester.

I just can't wrap my head around how the prevoiusly stalwart and highly effective champion of gay rights has now essentially outlawed exclusive homosexuality.

Have they made any statements that make this stance clear? Have they actively said they do not support exclusively homosexual spaces?

It is interesting how often new posters come onto to threads to say 'you're all nasty transphobes who are in an echo chamber! The other side have a point too!'.

And then they have a read through some of the other threads, see the same circular arguments made by the same posters, see the lack of evidence, research and reality offered by TRA's, start to think 'hang on,
but that doesn't make sense!' and come back to a later thread and say 'I get it now'.

There's long standing regular posters who went through it, often having been taken to task by Dittany (I never had the pleasure!).

On this particular thread, a homophobic, lesbophobic argument has been put forward that lesbians should consider their 'prejudices' when considering sexual partners and preferences such as height, weight or hair colour are comparable to inherent sexual orientation. I'm happy to have 'made my mind up' that I disagree with this.

Your answer to my comment had a lot in common with TWAW-it is very faith based.

I think this is a great example of the TRA practice of appropriating terminology and arguments from our side of the debate, and transplanting them into their own version of arguments. Where they simply don’t work at all.

There was absolutely nothing “faith based” in what Eresh said; it was pure objective, rational reason.

This idea that sex is a spectrum and someone can be somewhere along the line rather than on one of the only two points available is absolute nonsense. Sex refers to one’s reproductive capacity, the health and functionality of that reproductive capacity notwithstanding. That’s literally all it means.

Humans, like other mammals, fall into the class thar can produce ova, or the class that can produce sperm - regardless of whether they actually produce any at all. There are no humans that produce speggs or overm or any other ridiculous fantasy notion. There is no third sex. It is a binary. You cannot be more woman than man, you’re either a woman or a man.

And if you’re a man who’s modified his body with surgery and/or hormones so that it more closely resembles that of a woman, well, that’s exactly what you are. A man with bodily modifications, in an attempt to approximate a woman.

It is so profoundly insulting to women to say that our reality is so nebulous and indefinable that a man approximating it in this way actually is indistinguishable from us.

And of course the reality is that the vast majority of males who identify as women don’t actually have surgery at all, or if they do it’s just breast implants or “facial feminisation”. A good number don’t even bother with hormone treatment.

And can we set the record straight about the idea that all these poor men are living in great distress with acute, crippling gender dysphoria? No. They’re not. In fact it’s considered deeply transphobic these days to say that having GD is a prerequisite for being trans. Now it’s all about the “gender identity”: a conveniently indefinable, unpin-downable supposed internal “knowing” that you are a woman or a man absolutely independently of your biological sex, your sexed body.

Many of the biologically male people who claim to be trans nowadays don’t have any gender dysphoria at all and are perfectly happy with their perfectly male bodies. Their “gender identity” is all they need to claim thar they’re women. They are happy to parade around half naked in spaces for vulnerable women, showing off the unmistakably male, unmistakably aroused bulge in their underwear. Or their penis itself, in some well documented situations.

Not that I think a man with gender dysphoria is actually a woman either, but for the love of all that’s holy can we stop with the “such painful decisions, such a painful, difficult journey” narrative when it’s just not relevant to so many of the biologically male people who claim a trans identity these days. There’s nothing painful about being enabled to live out your fantasy in public while shitting all over the rights and boundaries of the sex class which actually is more vulnerable.

Male entitlement is not something that any woman who calls herself a feminist should be glorifying, glamorising or promoting.

Magdalen Berns made a YouTube video about Stonewall which I remember watching. She said that they do not represent lesbians and that they are 'treacherous money taking bastards'

I miss her. She spoke so much sense.

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark,

Given some of what I wrote, I don’t think the TRA community would embrace me!

My arguments were about genitalia and circulating hormones, not ‘feels’.

I do think that injecting hormones can approximate to the manufacture of hormones according to genetic instructions.

Do you think that it is impossible that people will EVER be able to change sex, regardless of scientific progress?

Do you think that it is impossible that people will EVER be able to change sex, regardless of scientific progress?

No because men are born with XY chromosomes and women are born with XX.

Sorry I mean it is impossible.

@RedDogsBeg

It's not surgeons and endocrinologists you need it is genetic engineers TheReluctantPhoenix.

Also personality engineers (who do not exist) to retro-fit the personality that would have developed had the person been treated from the day they were born the way our culture treats female-bodied people.

I don't believe male and female people have innately different personality traits. I do believe the way people treat you and the cultural images you see of "people like you" growing up affect the personality you develop.

Probably the main concern I have with the proposition that trans women must be interchangable with female people in all things is that it ignores these differences in socialisation.

The TRA assumption is (for those TRAs who have thought about it, which isn't many as most seem to assume that looking at women from the outside tells them all they could ever need to know about being a woman on the inside) that the trans woman's identification with females rather than males and being treated as a feminine male (so lesser in the patriarchy) means she magically picks up female socialisation instead of male.

I think there's enough public examples of trans women exhibiting male-socialised behaviour to question that assumption before making fundamental social changes based on it to the detriment of women.

To be clear, I don't like the differences in socialisation. I think they are a bad thing and we should challenge and ultimately remove them. But as long as they exist, female people need female-only support to mitigate them.

''No because men are born with XY chromosomes and women are born with XX.''

And if they invent a chromosome-changing machine? It may take hundreds of years, but what if science can perfectly change a male body to a female one - have they changed sex then?

Do you think that it is impossible that people will EVER be able to change sex, regardless of scientific progress?

Not until they have a way to vaporise the body and rebuild it from the cells up.

I disagree that sex is just a combination of chromosomes, external sex organs and circulating hormones.

Why only external sex organs? Internal sex organs are just as important or you are basing this solely on cosmetic appearance and artificial hormones?

If the hormones still have the capacity to be produced when no longer suppressed, how is that person 'closer to the other sex'?

Sorry if I'm being dense.

But don't the power balances / imbalances between men and women boil down to the fact that women are the ones who give birth and do the majority of childcare?

Do you think that it is impossible that people will EVER be able to change sex, regardless of scientific progress?

By change sex, do you mean change the chromosomes in every cell in their body, turn their entire reproductive system into one of the opposite sex and naturally produce hormones of their new sex?

What do you think? Seems like science fiction to me.

I do think that injecting hormones can approximate to the manufacture of hormones according to genetic instructions.

They are also artificial hormones, ie. not naturally produced in that persons body and not regulated by that person's body.

So, when those injections stop, what happens to that person's 'sex'?

What do you think? Seems like science fiction to me.

I agree. It's on a par with bringing Disney and his frozen head back to life...

We don't seem to have the skills to ensure everyone has access to clean running water and electricity, and you're dreaming of chromosome changing machines.

Wouldn't a 'make you happy with your body' machine be better? Or society moving away from sexist stereotypes?

@BilindaB

''No because men are born with XY chromosomes and women are born with XX.''

And if they invent a chromosome-changing machine? It may take hundreds of years, but what if science can perfectly change a male body to a female one - have they changed sex then?

Yes..... I am an avid Star Trek lover. But I really don't believe that this is at all relevant for the current discussion.

We have had a few posters in the past, to be fair, that have tried to argue that we should change all the laws to reflect this future prospect. You can imagine that they could not coherently argue their case.

@BilindaB

''No because men are born with XY chromosomes and women are born with XX.''

And if they invent a chromosome-changing machine? It may take hundreds of years, but what if science can perfectly change a male body to a female one - have they changed sex then?

They're not going to, and if they did, people with healthy bodies that cause them psychological distress will be at the back of the queue, behind people with life-limiting conditions caused by chromosomal abnormalities (e.g. various trisomies) and people with recessive genetic syndromes, like cystic fibrosis and haemophilia.

I believe there is something, maybe we can't fully explain it yet, that makes them so uncomfortable as the gender they were assigned and only find relief and happiness when they transition, that it's beyond choice, it's who they are. Of course they suddenly don't develop ovaries, but it's enough for me - as a woman - to allow them into the woman-club.

I know it’s been commented on already but I found this so stark from Bilinda earlier on.

Really crystal clear. Bilinda cannot be in any doubt that there are also a great many women who experience great distress and unhappiness at the fact of some biologically male people being enabled to access “women only” spaces and services. That a considerable number also experience genuine fear and trauma because of this.

And indeed, that women and girls have already been sexually assaulted and otherwise targeted by predatory males in women’s toilets/changing rooms as a direct result of the moves to allow males to self identify as women, or to make more of these spaces mixed sex (“gender neutral”).

Bilinda must know all this, and yet chooses to prioritise the feelings of a minority of biologically male people over the feelings and welfare of biologically female people. It’s that simple. Males first. The first sex, the sex that matters.

Crystal clear.

And womanhood is not a “club”, with all the associations of privilege and exclusivity that that word contains. It is not a hallowed place that female people cruelly turn male people away from, mocking them for their deficiencies and exulting in their own superiority, much as TRAs would have you believe that narrative.

It is simply a state of material reality - an often brutal reality, a reality shot through with powerlessness and vulnerability, as the women of Afghanistan know only too well in these terrifying days; loaded down with an almost unbearable history of oppression and second class status; and fraught with the ever-present threat of sexual violence from the opposite sex. And also the often joyful - but still painful and dangerous - reality of being those who grow new human beings in our bodies and deliver them into the world. And the impact of that on our lives, whether we want to be mothers or not, whether we are mothers or not, is something that cannot be overstated.

It’s a reality we all share, and that no male person does. It’s the reality of being female, in a world that centres males. It’s not a club. There are no guest passes. No golden tickets. No secret password, or handshake, to get in. Just material reality that dictates whether you are or aren’t.

Regarding hormones, take for example the recent discussion about hormone levels in transwomen athletes.

The allowed (reduced) testosterone hormone level in transwomen athletes is way, way above what is normal in women. If women took levels of testosterone at the reduced levels which transwomen athletes are allowed, they would 1). be very ill and 2). be disqualified for doping. East German athletes in the past tried to increase testosterone levels in order to get better results but have suffered widely publicised health issues and in some cases, early deaths by doing so.

Quite often TRA's will look at certain conditions such as PCOS in which testosterone levels are higher in females and use it as a 'gotcha' for males who have reduced their testosterone levels. I have PCOS and have higher levels of testosterone than the female 'norm' but it is still within female limits. I am a woman with a female endocrine disorder. A transwoman would be unlikely to be able to reduce their testosterone levels down to 'female norms' and would probably be quite ill if they tried to do so. The changes in hormone levels may make some minor physical changes (in the same way that my higher levels of testosterone give me hirsutism) but do not change the unchangeable male or female aspects of their body (skeletal structure, lung capacity, blood levels, etc etc).

I find it crass in the extreme that trans activists frequently claim that it will soon be possible to change people's chromosomes and that we would develop this technology thanks to people wanting to change sex.

You have absolutely no idea of the suffering in the world out there, do you? If it were remotely possible, we would be doing it. There are people dying from genetic disorders.

There are people dying from genetic disorders.

yes.

@BilindaB

''No because men are born with XY chromosomes and women are born with XX.''

And if they invent a chromosome-changing machine? It may take hundreds of years, but what if science can perfectly change a male body to a female one - have they changed sex then?

1. When (and if) that happens we can consider if and how we need to change society to reflect that. One of the things we would need to consider is whether simply flipping the body sex of a fully developed personality gives you a person interchangeable with someone who was that sex from birth, and if not, does it matter.

1. Destroying female-sex legal and social rights, provisions and opportunities now because something might be possible in hundreds of years is morally and intellectually bankrupt. Here and now, we are alive, men (the sex) cannot turn into women (the sex), and it's legitimate and moral that the laws and rights we have here and now acknowledge that reality.

1. It would be a bloody poor show by the human race* if in hundreds of years we've been able to develop sex-flipping technology but we still have to worry about sexism. So I would hope by that time it's a mute point because the reason we need female-specific rights and protections have gone away for everything other than the simple physical differences which your flippee would clearly share.

• although also bloody likely given there seems far more enthusiasm for edge research into transplanting wombs in male bodies for emotional reasons than making the simple social and economic changes that will improve quality of life for millions of people in the bodies they already have.

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark

I believe there is something, maybe we can't fully explain it yet, that makes them so uncomfortable as the gender they were assigned and only find relief and happiness when they transition, that it's beyond choice, it's who they are. Of course they suddenly don't develop ovaries, but it's enough for me - as a woman - to allow them into the woman-club.

I know it’s been commented on already but I found this so stark from Bilinda earlier on.

Really crystal clear. Bilinda cannot be in any doubt that there are also a great many women who experience great distress and unhappiness at the fact of some biologically male people being enabled to access “women only” spaces and services. That a considerable number also experience genuine fear and trauma because of this.

And indeed, that women and girls have already been sexually assaulted and otherwise targeted by predatory males in women’s toilets/changing rooms as a direct result of the moves to allow males to self identify as women, or to make more of these spaces mixed sex (“gender neutral”).

Bilinda must know all this, and yet chooses to prioritise the feelings of a minority of biologically male people over the feelings and welfare of biologically female people. It’s that simple. Males first. The first sex, the sex that matters.

Crystal clear.

And womanhood is not a “club”, with all the associations of privilege and exclusivity that that word contains. It is not a hallowed place that female people cruelly turn male people away from, mocking them for their deficiencies and exulting in their own superiority, much as TRAs would have you believe that narrative.

It is simply a state of material reality - an often brutal reality, a reality shot through with powerlessness and vulnerability, as the women of Afghanistan know only too well in these terrifying days; loaded down with an almost unbearable history of oppression and second class status; and fraught with the ever-present threat of sexual violence from the opposite sex. And also the often joyful - but still painful and dangerous - reality of being those who grow new human beings in our bodies and deliver them into the world. And the impact of that on our lives, whether we want to be mothers or not, whether we are mothers or not, is something that cannot be overstated.

It’s a reality we all share, and that no male person does. It’s the reality of being female, in a world that centres males. It’s not a club. There are no guest passes. No golden tickets. No secret password, or handshake, to get in. Just material reality that dictates whether you are or aren’t.

👏

Bilinda must know all this, and yet chooses to prioritise the feelings of a minority of biologically male people over the feelings and welfare of biologically female people. It’s that simple. Males first. The first sex, the sex that matters.

This bizarre need that many women have to coddle the feelings and egos of entitled males who can't bear to hear the word no from women. Not just about this, other things too. Weapons grade internalised misogyny.

Being a woman is really not a special club that males are missing out on and must be facilitated to access.

Excellent post, Talking, thank you. Eloquent as ever.

@nauticant

It does come across as lesbians being permitted to identify as such but needing to be careful in stating this out loud or publicly using that identity to maintain their own boundaries.

At the moment I'm hearing a report on the news about how women in Afghanistan are currently restricting their apparently still existing freedoms anticipating punishment and I can't help but find these very different situations to be vaguely similar.

There are obviously numerous posts referring to the same point but I can't quote them all so I will refer to this one.

So sexual orientation is different from other characteristics, but I would say the same approach is reasonable. So if a straight man was approached by a gay man I think they can easily say 'Sorry mate, I'm not interested', rather than saying 'Sorry mate, you've got a dick and balls and that's a real turn off for me', or if a straight woman was approached by a gay woman, she could say 'Sorry, I'm not interested' rather than shouting out 'God, no, I'm straight, your vulva is really unappealing to me". They are acting according to their orientations without going out of their way to say something that might be hurtful to others.

Anyone would think there has been a take over or something. I'm in these circles all the time - I know literally hundreds of lesbians! There is no need to batten up the hatches against some imaginary onslaught of male genitalia.

Trans lesbians have no interest at all in dating or having sex with someone that is not attracted to them - why is that so difficult to understand?

Would anyone posting here want to date or have sex with someone who didn't desire them? Of course not!

You don't really have to shout it out loud that you would never consider dating them or as sexual partners - believe me, they know and they're trying to avoid you too!

What do you think actually happens in exchanges? Are you imagining some sort of scenario where a trans lesbian walks up to another lesbian and demands sex? This is so bizarre. Why would you think that would happen?

Trans lesbians are operating in the same way as other lesbians, other gay men, straight men and straight women when it comes to dating. They're using the apps to see if there is an initial, mutual interest, they're meeting up and seeing if something more might develop. Or they're in larger social groups interacting and enjoying friendships and seeing if there are potential romantic interests. They know, just like everyone else, that anyone can be knocked back by any person for any reason, and there is no entitlement.

And sometimes, just like gay men and women and straight women and men they meet someone with whom they have a mutual attraction, and everyone is happy and there's been no bellicose show down about genitalia because there have either been early polite knock backs or there have been mature adult conversations.

There are lesbians that are happily dating trans lesbians, yes.