How do people think you can change sex?

[CuriousBogInTheNight]

I've obviy not followed closely enough but genuinely how has it become controversial to say you cannot change sex?! Sex is encoded from the moment of conception... Are people thick or have they tried to change the meaning of the word sex?

I’ll be interested to know if Robert Winston has received any rape threats since Question Time, or even a slandering from Owen Jones?

I'll go back and read the full thread now, but just wanted to say if I was on twitter, I'd follow SwipeWright just based on the two tweets Necessary Scene posted.

Colin Wright's great. He's a biologist and has worked with Emma Hilton on stuff.

Here they are being interviewed together:

(Although he's actually quit academia due to being smeared as transphobic - he now writes for Quillette).

@TheWeeDonkey

See we've just had a lockdown where hairdressers were shut form many months and its surprising to me to see so many women I've always known as having straight, blonde hair are not natural blondes and don't have straight hair 😮

Cross sex hormones and plastic surgery can give you a different appearance, and its great if you can achieve a look you feel suits you best, but it doesn't change your sex. Its dangerous to tell fragile people that it does and its dangerous to tell them there won't be side effects or consequences to consider from medical intervention.

I have just seen this. Do you remember that time the actress who played Matilda said that of course it is possible to change sex...hair dye anyone??😂😂🥴🥴

Those undergoing treatment for gender disphoria were merely trying to correct their bodies

But why? Why can't people just accept that they have a sexed body - because they do, and they can't change their sex even if they try to, and trying to is likely to cause a lot of problems and pain with no satisfactory result - and have whatever gender expression they like? Gender is not sex, so why does "gender" have to say anything about your sex How can your sex be "wrong" for your gender when anyone can do/wear whatever they want and we had already reached that point of understanding in the 1980s?

You do know a big part of the reason for this focus on hormones and surgeries is because damaging healthy bodies and medicalising people for life lines the pockets of doctors and pharma companies? It's not necessary. It doesn't "correct" anything.

Wasn't Matilda supposed to be really bright? 🤣

@TheWeeDonkey

Wasn't Matilda supposed to be really bright? 🤣

😂🤣I know!! I remember reading her shite on Twitter and being shocked because I think the actress has a degree or two. It is really something how their urge to please men triumphs over their intelligence and qualifications.

Magical thinking.
Science deniers.
Feelings over facts.
Because they are using this ideology to damage women.
Because people are too afraid to parent their kids.

Are their groups that co opt other chromosomal disorders to push their own agenda?
The 'pro-life' movement have tried using Down Syndrome. Didn't get them very far.

I am not sure about using dictionary definitions as proof, though.

We do use a lot of words wrongly and also avoid using others to spare people’s feelings.

Spastic was a perfectly respectable word to mean a sudden jerky movement; we tend not to call people that these days. Moron used to refer to a person who failed to attain a particular IQ score but, again, most parents would not like it if a school report referred to their child as a moron (even if it were biologically 100% true).

Even doctors use the word ‘weight’ incorrectly and would probably be surprised if you have your weight (correctly) as several hundred Newtons towards middle Earth.

As for ‘sex change’ operations, people also refer to getting ‘bigger breasts’ when breasts cannot actually be enlarged by an operation, merely their outward appearance changed by the insertion of a man made sac.

Sex, clearly, has meaningful implications, though, so merely redefining it to spare someone’s feelings cannot be done lightly.

Where sex matters (sport, prisons, the science lab, medical settings), we should be careful to be chromosomally correct. If someone wants to refer to themselves as having ‘changed sex’ I would no more take offence than someone referring to their ‘new breasts’.

@TheWeeDonkey

Wasn't Matilda supposed to be really bright? 🤣

To be fair she did think she could move things with her eyes. Changing sex is about as possible as that…

@LonginesPrime

Gender - you can absolutely change though.

How do I change the gender that other people project onto me so that I can avoid being oppressed as a result of my sex?

People push gender onto me without my consent so how can I stop that from happening without first buying into the idea that this tool that's being used to oppress me is something innate within me and not simply a sexist heap of outdated stereotypes?

That’s too deep for me to answer, perhaps someone else will better advise you….

Gender is what you say you are, what you identify with etc… it’s not biologically based it’s what you want to be viewed as.

Sex - well it’s not a choice. We are what we are.

Gender is what you say you are, what you identify with etc… it’s not biologically based it’s what you want to be viewed as.

Yes _ I can't "change my gender" because I don't "have a gender" and I don't think people generally do. I have a sex, and I have my personality, behaviour, tastes etc. That includes a lot of things that could be seen as typically feminine (dresses, make-up, sewing, etc) a lot of things that could be seen as typically masculine (short hair, big boots, DIY, etc), and a lot of things that are neither (gardening, writing, going to the cinema, reading, and on and on). My "gender" expression changes all the time. To have only feminine, masculine or "non-binary" gender expression would be ridiculously limiting and I don't think anyone is really like that - and even if they are, they can always take up something different at any point so it's not fixed.

The idea that there is a "gender binary" that we are mostly on one or the other side of, and that people have a "gender identity", is bollocks perpetuated by a regressive ideology that wants people to think that gender expression is inherently linked to sex so therefor if you have feminine "gender" you are a woman and should have your sex classified as female, because you don't fit in the right "gender box" or whatever - or that if you don't behave in an especially gendered way, you are a magical non-binary unicorn who is so much more special than normal people. It's just shite. I'm at least as "non-binary" as most people who claim to be non-binary. Gender is non-binary.

Did any of you see the controversial tiktok of a trans women saying she wouldn’t tell a man she was trans before having sex with him?

Isn't that sex by deception, which is illegal?

I’m not sure, she’s not very obviously trans and has stated if someone likes her and wants to she wouldn’t tell them beforehand if they didn’t realise for themselves, because in her eyes she is a women.

OK, I am on another forum discussing people changing sex and someone has just posted the following -

"Quite a few trans men go through a male puberty actually, you could even say typically they do. Being trans it's also quite expected."

I am not sure where to start with this, because we all know that human females do have testes or produce sperm, plus so many other factors.
Has the World gone mad?

AlfonsoTheDinosaur

"Isn't that sex by deception, which is illegal?"

I believe it is. Here is Julie Bindel discussing it in an article.

thecritic.co.uk/issues/july-2021/when-is-a-rape-not-a-rape/

I think common sense would say it was deception. But wouldn't that arguably depend on the assumption that the man would only have sex with women, not TW (a reasonable assumption, but an assumption nonetheless)?

@Kosmin

I think common sense would say it was deception. But wouldn't that arguably depend on the assumption that the man would only have sex with women, not TW (a reasonable assumption, but an assumption nonetheless)?

How do dating / hook-up sites/apps work?

What are a man's odds of meeting a transwoman this way without knowing it?

Genuine question. Never likely to use such a site.

@Kosmin

I think common sense would say it was deception. But wouldn't that arguably depend on the assumption that the man would only have sex with women, not TW (a reasonable assumption, but an assumption nonetheless)?

I'm assuming it's so they can give informed consent!

Violence against transwomen is very high in some parts of the world, e.g. Latin America, where there are many trans sex workers. Anybody doing that kind of work is of course at very high risk area of male violence. In some cases men may feel they've been deceived if they didn't know beforehand.

@EyesOpening
I'm assuming it's so they can give informed consent!

But what information is required to make informed consent? Isn't that arguable?
As I said, I would think many would argue that TW should be disclosed, but presumably those who say TWAW would disagree.

But what information is required to make informed consent? Isn't that arguable?
As I said, I would think many would argue that TW should be disclosed, but presumably those who say TWAW would disagree.

They would be looking at consent completely the wrong way round. It's for the person giving consent - or not - to decide what is important to them.

They would be looking at consent completely the wrong way round. It's for the person giving consent - or not - to decide what is important to them.

Absolutely agree - although the problem with that is that it relies on the honesty and understanding of the other person to disclose that information.

If the other person genuinely doesn't understand that this information is material to some people (or wilfully ignores the fact that it might be), they likely won't disclose it, so it becomes the responsibility of any man who cares about natal sex to ask beforehand and hope for the truth, I guess.

Anyway, that's for men to iron out themselves.

Violence against transwomen is very high in some parts of the world, e.g. Latin America, where there are many trans sex workers.

It is true that most of the transwomen murdered globally are sex workers in Latin America but is there more violence against them than female sex workers? As no comparative figures are ever given, it is difficult to say, whether it is their trans identity which puts them at risk or the fact that anyone working in the sex industry in South America is at risk of violence and death.