PM on Radio 4: what is gender identity?

[nauticant]

Evan Davis said that there will be a "good natured" chat about this in tonight's programme. This will give him a chance to demonstrate again his well-known impartiality on this issue.

It's not yet clear when this segment will be in the programme.

The interesting thing is that the people who have had surgery are always very keen to explain their genitals look exactly like women's.

Which is unsettling.

Lucy does not have "a birth certificate saying born a girl."

They have a replacement birth certificate which now falsely say "sex: female" based on a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and a commitment to "live as a woman".

I am so fed up of the cutesy "born a girl" type language.

The rest of the equally bizarre, something like "who does Kathleen Stock think she is saying what a woman is" . Well, she's a woman for a start.

I do not understand why having the mental health issue of dysphoria means a person can change sex.

PigeonLittle

Thank you for transcribing the first programme, that was very enlightening. Especially in view of the fact that India subsequently said that they felt ill and upset because they'd been eliminated, was it? On the programme? By Stock.

I mean, Kathleen couldn't have been more pleasant and civil.

This narrative that there is something specific in one's body that means one should have been born a girl, is obviously, based on all the evidence available, not correct.

It's just a different form of body dysmorphia.

Kathleen stock was very kind in her framing of it. That some people absolutely genuinely think they should've been born the opposite sex and she believes it's because they are attracted to the stereotypes of that sex. From what I can tell, she's calling that gender identity. And she thinks it's a legitimate characteristic.

Wanting to inhabit the superficial stereotypes of the opposite sex is something that is born out all the time.. And something that formerly was largely accepted by both the public, and the transsexuals of yore.

The difference now, to my mind, (in my opinion HQ), is the addition of AGP as a motivation. That does not allow for anything other than the narrative that the person is actually the opposite sex.

There is no wiggle room because the person is just trying to solve the issue of discomfort. It has to be that they have changed sex, or that woman does not mean biological sex.

It's my understanding that Kathleen stock doesn't set much store by AGP, which is why perhaps, her version of what a gender identity is and what a lot of TRAs say it is, is so different.

She thinks it should only matter when you're basing laws and policies on it. The problem is, for many transwomen, there can be absolutely no exceptions, whatsoever. Because that would indicate doubt.

Even though there appear to be quite a few people who want to get down to the nitty-gritty, none of them seem to be talking about the actual nitty-gritty.

Consider themself to have a female soul

Ok, and how did they come to that conclusion? How can you allocate a sex to your soul? Is there a list of female soul things and male soul things? Does it, perchance, bear any resemblance to regressive stereotypes?

Your sex is determined by your body not your personality - or soul.

All about feeling feminine. Whatever changes to to their birth certificate have been made, it is basically a lie. How dare the men in the room attack lesbian feminists who know why this is problematic. Interesting that their wife decided she was a lesbian, but had to go through looking after her husband , father of her child. Not a lot of freedom for her.

However the row about Rosie Kay was also mentioned in another section of the programme...a nasty warning of what might happen to women if you dare to point out that the emperor has no clothes.

I had to turn it off because it was so weird. I think a lot of listeners will have recognised it as self-indulgent and odd. Who wants to listen to an old person banging on about their vagina? I don’t, and I’m nearly 70. Nor am I interested in people’s souls. They can keep them to themselves.
Yes ED was loving it. But I don’t think he knows much about vaginas, or wants to.

I am sick and tired of being told (almost invariably by men) that the only reason I know I'm a woman is because I have an internal feeling of femaleness. Which is just the same as their internal femaleness, and they are therefore also a woman.

No. I know I'm a woman because my body is biologically female. That impacts on every aspect of my life: that I need to ask a handy man to open jam jars; that I sat a GCSE sat in a puddle of my own blood, with the consequent impact on grades; that I am inherently weaker than men and thus vulnerable to sexual violence; that I was up quite a lot of last night with hot flushes; that my brother's jeans do not - and never will - fit me like they do him. That and 1001 other things, because we are enfleshed beings, and our biology fundamentally matters.

These are experiences that no transwoman can ever have. Their lived experience is fundamentally different from mine because of that. Not lesser. But different.

I'm not a woman because I have a female soul. I don't believe in gendered souls. I'm a woman because I have a female body.

The item with Lucy sounded as though it was heavily edited. Evan also asked for more contributions on the topic. Anyone here up for it?

Listened to this in the kitchen whilst making tea. DH was quite at Lucy. He's listened to way less of the 'in their own words' interviews than I have up to now.

All so nice until the rather aggressive dig at those pesky lesbian feminists. You can make Lucy out of the man but you can’t take The man out of Lucy.

I heard the trailer for Lucy at the beginning of the programme and decided from the clip that my blood pressure wouldn't thank me if I listened to the whole thing.

"Ask any woman and they'll say they're a woman because they feel like a woman" therefore Lucy, who also feels like a woman is a woman.

Don't you just love the mansplaining being told why you are the way you are: here vipers, we've been told now what a woman is. End of discussion, no need for any more analysis. 'Cause of the feelz.

"Ask any woman and they'll say they're a woman because they feel like a woman" therefore Lucy, who also feels like a woman is a woman.

I think that's the bit I will comment on when I contact the programme.

1. How would anyone know who to ask?

1. All the thousands of women who are campaigning about this think they are women because they are adult human females. An objective measure that doesn't rely on feelings.

I need to listen again to hear if ED maybe thought to question this obvious falsehood.

From his point of view ED had the perfect interview: becoming a transwoman is a huge undertaking so it's wrong to question the sincerity of any transwoman, transwomen have women's brains, since transwomen are completely reasonable the only way forward is #bekind, and lesbians are causing a great deal of trouble in their disobedience and non-compliance.

I think the problem with this debate is simply that so many people are willing to accept and not question the concept of a “female soul”. If you read the Hansard debates about the gender recognition act, a few Lords talk about trans women having a “female soul” and this is not argued against at all. It just makes a deep kind of sense to people. I saw another televised debate on the BBC, and this woman said “trans women have a female brain in a male body” and there was lots of nodding agreement from the audience. These concepts don’t seem immediately or on their face absurd. They seem truthy. They make sense. And this is why genderism has been able to make such progress.

Imagine that the debate was between a black person and a white person who said they had a black soul, or a black brain in a white body. The immediate reaction to this is that it’s racist nonsense. There is no such thing as a “black brain”. There is no way a white person could have a “black soul”. The entire concept is just ludicrous.

I think the reason that a female soul or female brain makes so much sense to people is because sex stereotypes are so ingrained, so ancient, so widespread they seem real and natural. There is some female essence which transmits femininity and men can magically have this too sometimes. I think we have a real uphill battle with this debate simply because the basic premises (which are ludicrous) are accepted due to sexism.

I think the reason that a female soul or female brain makes so much sense to people is because sex stereotypes are so ingrained, so ancient, so widespread they seem real and natural. There is some female essence which transmits femininity and men can magically have this too sometimes. I think we have a real uphill battle with this debate simply because the basic premises (which are ludicrous) are accepted due to sexism.

This is so true. Have you read Inferior by Angela Saini? It really opened my eyes to how much is just accepted as being differences between males and females when it is just sexism based on bad science.

These days I wince when I see the name Angela Saini:

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/what-is-a-woman

I really agree that these bonkers concepts seem 'truthy' to people
and it's not just sexism, I think in a way it's even deeper than that- the notion that we are fleshy machines animated by a mind/soul which is immaterial...that even makes an intuitive sense to me and I don't believe it! It's really embedded in Western thought.

And this is why we have such an uphill struggle, as dismantling that assumption requires abstract critical thought. I know that the vast majority of people have a commonsense recoil at the idea of men in womens' prisons, or that a person with a penis could be called a woman.

But I think those same people can go along with the thought experiment, 'imagine having a woman's brain but you are trapped in a man's body', and their instinct is to be kind to those people (this is about the level of analysis Evan Davies is at, evidently)- so we need to speak to that instinct I think.

I can understand that some people accept the belief that someone can be born into the wrong body given I was brought up in a religion that taught we have a body and soul and the soul 'enters' the body rather than is generated by it (for want of a better phrase).
What I cannot understand is how many organisations treat the belief as though it were a fact.
Especially given that some people are non-binary or have different gender expressions on different days. Do they have more than one soul? Or a soul that doesn't fit any of the bodies on offer?

Having read some accounts of trans sexuals on another thread about fetishes, it seems some boys/men present themselves as more typically feminine and might go on to be attracted to men if they are not caught up by feeling they must be women; but there is another group who are more typically masculine and attracted to women but who develop a fetish to wear female underwear and clothes and are aroused by this. They come to want to be the self same woman’s body they are aroused by, as though aroused by themselves. These in the second group are called transvestite fetishists, also autogynephiles, but that last word has all but been erased from studies as taboo/hateful. Obviously people knowing about that would not gain them sympathy.

These are the sort, such as one reported on another thread, filming himself in ladies’ changing rooms with an erection. Some masturbate to used sanitary items from the bins. Some have a fetish about having a baby and breast feeding it, but unlike women find that fantasy feeding sexual. Men like this are troubled souls who are not going to be talking about this on Radio 4.

These are the sort, such as one reported on another thread, filming himself in ladies’ changing rooms with an erection. Some masturbate to used sanitary items from the bins. Some have a fetish about having a baby and breast feeding it, but unlike women find that fantasy feeding sexual. Men like this are troubled souls who are not going to be talking about this on Radio 4.

"Troubled souls" is one way of putting it. You're right, of course - they're not going to email PM asking if they can talk about their sexual fetishes to Evan Davies. But PM really does need to invite a trans widow on to talk about what it's like living with a man who has AGP: the bullying, the narcissism, the gaslighting. Otherwise once again it will look as if the BBC is choosing sides in this debate.

ED made sure they chose sides by refusing to properly ask not just what the ‘philosophy’ of trans women is, but what the problems are in the demands trans women are making of women and girls.

Odd that Lesbians are targeted as causing trouble for trans. I'm not a Lesbian and I bloody well will continue to be troublesome.

Perhaps another one of those twisters - make it only about Lesbians and then non Lesbians wont mind. Do they think we're that shallow?

On the "Lucy" show yesterday, the BBC took inordinate trouble to indulge a very odd veillard, who apparently has had their dick cut off.

It was not worthy of national broadcast.