I was wrong

[Lezbehonest]

I have name changed for this because it feels major for me and I'm honestly a bit scared of being identified.

I'm a 27 year old lesbian who is starting to realise I am gender critical. This feels like a major step to even type as the friendship groups I have and the online world I inhabit is very very pro-trans. I have always blindly accepted the doctrine, TWAW, protect trans kids, all genders are valid blah blah.

It's only since I started reading more here than I started questioning it a bit more. I became uncomfortable with the resolute lack of debate. I started eye rolling when yet another celebrity came out as non binary, I started having conversations with my wife about it (she's largely in agreement.) Ive stopped prefixing every conversation with 'I know I sound terfy but...' i realised that my academic side who has always sought evidence and argument wasn't compatible with these conversations. I started wondering where all the butch women I know and love have gone. I started fearing for the trans people I know (many of whom transitioned long before it was a 'thing') whose validity in society is being undermined by this shitshow. I had a conversation with the cleverest woman I know in an Uber (felt like a clandestine meet) where we acknowledged without saying the words that we're both uncomfortable with the way the wind in blowing.

Where the fuck do I start? What can I read? How do I uncondition my brain and can I keep those of my friends who will hate me for even having these thoughts? I'm already exhausted.

Any advice on where to start much appreciated. I'm very prepared to put in the time to read, understand and absorb opinion.

@WomaninBoots said what I meant to say with far more efficiency and articulacy.

Gayzed

Lots of people who have qualifications in biology disagree with your friend. There is variation, but sex is a binary as there are only two gametes and every human being is the result of both of them combining.

You won't find a peer reviewed biology paper stating that sex is a spectrum, and I know this as I've seen a large number of people claim it, who weren't able to provide one. This isn't a useful starting point for the majority of human biology. When biologists say sex is "fuzzy" or "a spectrum" they are talking in layperson's terms about gender identity issues, and/or disorders/differences of sex development.

Every journey begins with a single step

Also, the existence of people with differences of sex development does not have anything to do with transgender identity. DSDs are biological, gender identity is social and psychological.

I think PhD can get quite excited by the complexity and forget that in the real world we've always known which type of human is which without much of an issue.

Getting obsessed with the possibility of sex ambiguities is like getting obsessed with the possibility of a coin flip landing on its edge.

In humans the odds of "unambiguous male"/"unambiguous female"/"some ambiguity" are about the same as "heads"/"tails"/"edge".

Any system that doesn't concentrate on coins usually being heads or tails, or even acknowledge that that's the normal result and start saying "coin flip results are a spectrum", is going to be distinctly suboptimal.

(Plus anyone trying to distract you from whether a coin is head or tails by talking about "edges" is probably trying to swindle you).

About the biology of sex and it's fuzziness. In mammalian vertebrates (humans, bats, whales, etc, etc) it is not at all fuzzy. The producer of large gametes is female, the one making small gametes is male. Chromosomes are always xx for female and xy for male. (If there are exceptions, I'm unaware of them.)

Some vertebrates, eg birds, have different sex determining chromosomes, xx males, xz females, but they can't change between them. Once you get to older lineages, such as a few reptiles, some fish, etc, egg or sperm production can change in an individual depending on environmental conditions.

And in fungi for instance, some have multiple mating strains which have to pair in precise ways to produce offspring. Wild, but totally irrelevant to mammals.

Usually, what people mean when they try to imply human sexes are "fuzzy" is an unwarranted jump from Differences of Sexual Development (DSDs) aka intersex conditions. There are issues during development that can make the external sex organs look different than expected. But concluding therefore that sex itself is somehow non-binary would be like looking at conjoined twins (another developmental issue) and deciding that was evidence we were all on a spectrum of having a variable number of limbs.

So, tl:dr; your biology Ph.D. friend has allowed herself to believe absurdities.

(God, I hate it when that happens. "its" in the first line of course. Not "it's.")

GayzedAndConfused

I would take issue with this bit.

A genotypic male might have some genetic traits that mean his system is flooded with estrogen so if she was trying to refer to this guy specifically she'd say he's hormonally female and chromosomally male, and like if that estrogen made him grow breasts or something he'd be phenotypically a mix of male and female traits

Her argument rests on a simplication of endocrinology. I am female. I spent over a decade without being flooded with oestrogen. It's called being a child.

I am now post-puberty but pre-menopausal, which means I have a hormonal cycle, in which my levels of oestrogen, progesterone, testosterone and luteinising hormone all rise and fall.

In the future, assuming I don't get run over by a us first, I will go through menopause, and my ovaries will stop producing oestrogen.

At all these points, I will still be female.

Cherry-picking one of the hormones involved in female endocrinology and categorizing it as the female hormone does not make a man with high oestrogen levels "hormonally female". He's a man whose levels of that hormone have been raised.

It is complete balderdash, which unsexes women post-menopause!

Ah yes, the redefinition of the terminology to fit the answer you want to get.

Hormonal sex wasn't a thing until TRAs wanted to say that trans people literally changed sex. Now it's being used to say that people on hormonal therapies are the sex they want to be because they've artificially lowered/increased their hormone levels.

Men with gynaecomastia have never been called hormonally female just because they grew breasts due to side effects of prostate cancer treatment or obesity. Why is that? It's not because noone knew that the breast growth was down to estrogen levels.

I don’t think anyone is attacking your PhD friend on a personal level, @GayzedAndConfused. After all, none of us knows your friend, so how could we?

People are disputing the assertion about sex being a spectrum and being “fuzzy”.

That’s the difference between posters on this board and TRAs. We tend to take issue with the argument, not the person arguing.

I fear all the PPs offering thoughtful reasoned arguments will be lost on GayzedAndConfused.
They addressed us as “y’all” in one of their posts. I have found that to be a reliable marker for a TRA ally.

@Babdoc

I fear all the PPs offering thoughtful reasoned arguments will be lost on GayzedAndConfused. They addressed us as “y’all” in one of their posts. I have found that to be a reliable marker for a TRA ally.

So true.

Lezbehonest This is a good essay to read when you're feeling guilty.

theblisteringrebuttal.substack.com/p/4183e962-ded5-47f7-b89f-c49b9de6cbb5

Hi @Lezbehonest

As you can see, you aren't the only one having problems squaring this circle, from any perspective.

As others have said, take some time. Have a read round, you have been offered some pretty good links. I am sure it all looks overwhelming.

But be assured that many others here, myself incuded, have been where you are and have had to slowly reconstruct their sense of self - it is hard to undo the years and years of socialisation that demands we 'be nice' and not point out that the King really is in the altogether!

Read you later

Curious, if at any point, you feel you're still an overly courteous work in progress, definitely read my link!

I have American friends who use y'all, and I have no idea as to their views on the subject. It is an American slang so a bit of a leap to presume gayzedandconfused is a TRA. Also, in her defence, her friend did get called condescending, stupid and/or ignorant, so that probably smarts a bit.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

Curious, if at any point, you feel you're still an overly courteous work in progress, definitely read my link!

I shall do that later, I REALLY have to go to work now!!

@Coreblimy

I have American friends who use y'all, and I have no idea as to their views on the subject. It is an American slang so a bit of a leap to presume gayzedandconfused is a TRA. Also, in her defence, her friend did get called condescending, stupid and/or ignorant, so that probably smarts a bit.

This is a UK site, and the term is not used in the UK, except (in my experience and clearly that of a PP too) by a group of people heavily engaged in social media trans activism.

Race is a hell of a lot fuzzier than sex. Would you use that as a justification for removing protections for those at risk of racism? Should we just accept discrimination if a concept is deemed to be fuzzy?

Clearly MN is of such renown it has reached an international audience. I'd think that was a good thing, especially as the US has so few refuges (online and IRL) for gender critical thinking.

Welcome

I'd think that was a good thing, especially as the US has so few refuges (online and IRL) for gender critical thinking.

The closest "US" equivalent is Ovarit - the site created by the ex-mods of Reddit's r/GenderCritical after it was banned. It's Reddit-like, rather than a forum, and a majority-US crowd, though quite a few Brits too.

Not a huge amount of overlap between the Mumsnet FWR and Ovarit user bases, afaict.

Any US readers should check it out - US legal issues in particular get more detailed coverage there.

OP - you sound a lot like where DH and I were about 4 or 5 years ago. I think the bit I had to sort of get my head around before I could move on, was understanding two key points:

1. my previous understanding of trans was based on what I'd seen in the media etc in which trans people were people for whom anyone would have incredible sympathy as they struggled massively to navigate the world and did their best to truly become the man/woman they wanted to be via surgery etc. Think back to many portrayals of trans people in the last 10 years and you will see this is true. But I had to realise that in fact this wasn't what was happening and that the people who were yelling the loudest that TWAW weren't the ones who were, to all intents and purposes, actually very similar to me as a woman.

1. Being against the mantra of TWAW is NOT anti trans. I remain deeply sympathetic to trans people. I 100% believe they should get the support they need, good medical care etc. I just had to realise that in the same way that I believe children should get support, or men, that that support is not the same as the support I need as a woman.

Longer term, I think I also started to feel my identity was being taken away. I am so angry not just at the menstruators or cervix-haver language but at the fact that we are not using this language for men. No one is referring to "penis havers" or "sperm producers"

Obviously, there are a million other things, but those were the bits I had to overcome first in order to start to fully embrace and feel comfortable with my GC position.

[quote GayzedAndConfused]@Lezbehonest

"I realised that my academic side who has always sought evidence and argument wasn't compatible with these conversations."

This is the bit that frustrates me though, I'm from an academic background too and ive had kind of the opposite experience to you. I hear all these arguments about trans people that just are so clearly right when i read about them online (twitter mainly)but whenever I look up what the science/academia says in response it's always siding with trans talking points.

I've got a real disconnect in my head about what I know to be true about the problems trans stuff is causing, and what the people and scientific groups I trust are saying[/quote]
Could you provide some links to the science which sides with the trans talking points please?

@babdoc

"They addressed us as “y’all” in one of their posts. I have found that to be a reliable marker for a TRA ally."

Christ, I think it's just a "younger person in the gay community" thing