I was beaten to third place in a running race by a trans woman

[Athleticpotential]

It's a very low key local running race, neither of us are usually contenders, but a combination of circumstances meant the field was such that we finished 3rd and 4th.

The prize is a bottle of cheap wine, it's not about that.

I know her to chat to at races and I like her. It's not common knowledge that she's trans, she enters races as a woman. She is very masculine to look at, but TBH, until recently I thought she was an unfortunate woman, I had no idea.

So in the scheme of things it doesn't matter, but it does....?

Should I "do" anything? What?

This exactly. What is your response to this, Ntsure?

I find cis offensive. It has a definition as a person whose abstract gender identity happens to correlate with the sex of their body. Some also add that a cis person is comfortable with the gender roles and rules assigned to their sex in a particular culture.

I protest two things in that: First, I do NOT possess an abstract gender identity, and it's not right that others can simply impose one on me. I am a woman because I live in a female body. You could interpret that in a loose sense an identity, but it is NOT abstract. It is based on biological sex and how the society treats me because my sex is female.

Second, I am not comfortable with the gender roles and rules assigned to my sex.

I doubt that many people now called cis possess an abstact gender identity, but even if some do others are now left without any name for their gender.

Women and trans women, men and trans men is perfectly fine.

I ageee with it 🤷🏻‍♀️
but we live in a gendered society so saying “gender is bullshit” means little in real terms

You believe you live in a gendered society, I choose not to and to live my life as someone who is just me with a body that is a particular sex.

No cis. I ask again, please stop using it, it is offensive.

Now, any answers to any of the questions you’ve been asked?

While it may entertain you to continue sparpling and distracting, you very lack of ability to answer the questions shows a great deal too.

An opinion piece was published yesterday on what should be done about trans women's inclusion in women's sports. The writer tells women to accept some unfairness.

That piece is such a wonderful example of the confidence men often seem to have on issues they clearly haven't studied to any depth. To me the piece sounds like something a student would write, but published it got.

"We live in a gendered society" means that society imposes sex role stereotypes on us based on our bodies' sex.

When we say that someone acting according to those stereotypes is literally the associated sex, regardless of what sex they actually are, we are saying that those gendered stereotypes are more accurate, relevant and important than someone's actual sex. And people that don't actively have those stereotypical characteristics are "not real men" or "not real women". That is what "cis" is saying
because it's part of the belief system that buys into gender stereotypes above all else.

we would still share the common factor of having a female body.

And a five foot 4 man with xy chromosomes and long hair would still be a man, and a 6 foot woman with xx chromosomes and short hair would still be a woman.

but we live in a gendered society so saying “gender is bullshit” means little in real terms

No we don't. Most of us live in a world of sex being male or female. It's only relatively recently that the waters have got muddied, when people are asked for 'gender' when the information required is for sex. I thought initially it was because people got a bit prudish about the word sex.

yes I believe trans women ARE women

Ah well, that's where we differ.

Referring to non trans women as “proper women” infers that trans women are what, improper women? Not women at all?

"Proper" isn't the word I would have chosen myself, but along the lines of "not really women" or "not women in every way that counts".

Maybe think of it a bit like proper and improper fractions. A proper fraction is always less than one. An improper fraction is a whole number plus a proper fraction, you can write it as one number over another and you can do some of the same things with it. But it's more than one, so it's just not the same thing.

Is this the question you’re wanting me to answer?
”What is the thing that you claim women have in common - the thing that makes them women?”
i don’t think there’s any one thing they all women have in common besides identifying as a woman.

The writer tells women to accept some unfairness.

Written of course by a bloke. Although he didn't actually say whether he was male or female.
Some of the baloney spouted: Sex is a bimodal spectrum, and many trans women fall closer to the ‘female’ side of that spectrum than the ‘male’ side.

Do tell us how this is the case. Even as it appears you are mixing up DSD with transwomen, the presence of a y chromosome makes you male. Not a spectrum. XXY, as I found out via a previous thread, gives you a male pathway DSD.

Preliminary research suggests that some sex-based advantages may remain for trans women athletes who went through a male puberty, even after several years of hormone therapy.

Do tell us why they have chosen to have hormone therapy. We know that some men with cancers need to have their testosterone suppressed - that's a valid reason done for their health. Otherwise it's a choice. I do however wonder whether ten or twenty years down the line these transwomen will be quite so happy when predominantly female complaints like osteoporosis kick in. But that is a consequence of their choice.

i don’t think there’s any one thing they all women have in common besides identifying as a woman.

I don't see any good reason to reorganise society around this new belief.

i don’t think there’s any one thing they all women have in common besides identifying as a woman.

So chromosomes xx and xy don't exist? Have we turned the clock back a few centuries when we didn't know about these things? So males don't produce sperm at maturity and females produce eggs, during their childbearing years.

A quick look at birth, sometimes on a scan, usually gives a straight answer. A paediatrician on a thread yesterday said that in twenty years of practice, they had seen only about 3 cases where they couldn't say immediately and had to call for further tests.

No

I have asked you if you understand sports categories and how they work?

amongst other questions.

But that is a start.

I'm sorry but that's a desperate attempt to try to shoe horn male people into the category to serve male wishes. It's defining the entire female half of the human race not by them or their voices but by male wishes. Which is just beyond extreme misogyny and really makes a complete nonsense of talking about respect or lived experience or identity or anything else, because in all of that you only care if using those words and ideas are serving the benefit of male people to achieve this agenda.

The only thing that every woman on the planet has in common is being biologically female. The only thing that every TW on the planet has in common would be entirely different. This is the truth.

Just read. Oh the horror! This is someone I would absolutely love to talk to face to face.

Would the answer to this problem not be to challenge the concept of gender (which, after all, is pretty damaging, particularly to woman but also to men) rather than buy into it wholesale by designating us all as ‘cis’ and ‘trans’? I don’t want to be called cis. For me it would be a bit like being called a heretic by the Christian Church when actually I was a Muslim/Jew/atheist. I don’t accept the legitimacy of gender dogma at all because it harms my interests. I won’t be defined by it.

The only thing all women and girls have common is our female sex. If we define women in any other way we are much weakened in our ability to mobilise politically to fight against sex-based forms of oppression (Afghanistan, say) and discrimination, or even to get accurate statistical data about them.

God that Benjamin Hause article is hilariously dumb.

i am sure that women of Afghanistan would love to be able to say that sex doesn't matter, it's gender and we identify as transmen and are men. So how about it chaps,we will claim all the Government jobs, we will go outside without a male relative if we choose, because we are men. I don't think it's going to wash in Afghanistan somehow.

i don’t think there’s any one thing they all women have in common besides identifying as a woman.

in what way is that misogynistic?

Because you're saying it about women. If you were saying it about another group, it would be something else

"I don't think there's any one thing all X have in common besides identifying as X."

"In what way is that anti-X?"

It's anti-X, because the real group X, with the actual characteristics being denoted by X, would greatly benefit from retaining that word for the actual group, rather than making it a meaningless term for anyone who fancies using it, leaving them with no word.

Sorry, the word "woman" is taken.

Along with the words for lots of other groups with even less clearly-defined common interests. But "woman" is the one most seriously under attack. Which has proved very educational about how much contempt they are held in, as a group.

“i don’t think there’s any one thing they all women have in common besides identifying as a woman.”.

Mmm, I’m wearing trousers. Does that mean I’m identifying as a man? And yet I’m wearing make-up, so am I identifying as a woman?

’To identify’ is a verb, ie, a doing word. But I’m not ‘doing’ anything when I am I’m a woman. ‘I am’ a woman, not ‘I am identifying’ as a woman. A subtle but important difference. Woman is not a concept people aligned themselves too, it’s a state of being.

I thought as a society we were making an effort to move away from gender stereotypes pink is for girls toys will be toys campaign etc. why are the youth so keen to reinstate them?

Not to mention, let's be honest about this, when someone says 'I identify as a woman' they are meaning woman in the sense of a biological female. We might all be politely avoiding being specific about it to be sensitive to feelings, but that is what the shared meaning is, and without it 'I identify as a woman' would mean nothing. 'I feel like a woman' and 'living as a woman' would mean nothing.

Fucking absolutely all of this ^^💪