I went to a talk about trans issues.

[FrankTheThunderbird]

Disclaimer... if I accidentally use the wrong language I apologise. I'm trying my best. And I'll be using the pronouns we were asked to use.

It was more balanced than I expected. But still biased, and all questions had to be handed in before the session and pre- vetted.

The panel was led by someone who didn't say how they identify. (If they did I didn't hear) but in the 'old days' would be a butch lesbian. There was an enby, afaik they were born female, mentioned using he/him at one point before becoming they/them. 2 TW. And a TM.

They talked about their journey to become who they are now. It was interesting. No mention from the older TW about how her then wife coped/felt other than they got divorced as a result. I felt sorry for them all, it sounds like they had some bad times (so have I so that's not exclusive to trans people, but I have empathy)

They mentioned sharing pronouns and said you should never feel you have to, but also don't do the jokey "well obviously my pronouns are..."

So far so good.

Then we had

Sex and Gender are the same thing. Feminists pretend they aren't so they can deny our existence.

Sex isn't fixed or binary because of seahorses. Not only do male seahorses carry the eggs, they also fertilise them themselves. (No idea if that's true. DS said if it is are seahorses technically clones?).
I wanted to ask why that's relevant to humans, I mean seahorses can breathe underwater and I can't so we aren't the same. But we weren't allowed.

One of the questions was from a 12 year old who thought they were trans. The answer from one of the TW was "tell your parents. If they don't believe you I can't say what i recommend as it's illegal". If that isn't a veiled recommendation to threaten self harm/suicide I don't know what is.

And some things I didn't fully understand. One of the TW kept mentioning a book, should have made a note of the title, about trans children in history, or the medicalisation of them. Or something. I couldn't work out why experimental surgery in the past,which we don't do on children any more, was therefore meant to be a sign that trans people exist. Or something.
All the books they mentioned were firmly on the side of TWAW, nothing from the 'other side' or in the middle of the road as it were.

Finally, if anyone recognises this talk and was there maybe you can clarify if I've got any of the content wrong. I don't think I have. That's certainly how I understood it. And there were people there who I overheard afterwards saying they didn't know anything until then, there were also some younger teens there. So they've learned some wrong 'facts' and may well go away believing them.

Sorry its long!

Very interesting, thanks for posting

One of the questions was from a 12 year old who thought they were trans. The answer from one of the TW was "tell your parents. If they don't believe you I can't say what i recommend as it's illegal". If that isn't a veiled recommendation to threaten self harm/suicide I don't know what is.

They might have meant buying hormones online.

FrankThethunderbird interesting post and to read their and your perspective, although yes still sounds biased.

I was wondering if it was Greenbelt with you mentioning Clergy, haven't been there for years, but read some mixed reviews about it this year.

That is a fascinating essay, Sazzasez. Thanks for posting.

Good point. I didn't think of that.

@duvet it was indeed. It was absolutely bloody fantastic. Even with the biased trans talk.

The xy woman in the case study had mixed DNA (mosaicism) and was able to have a spontaneous pregnancy due to the incredibly good fortune that her small percentage of XX chromosomes were located in her ovaries.

her (miracle) daughter was born with a XY DSD that resulted in infertility, so to say it was a normal pregnancy and thus xy people can have babies is nonsense. The sole reason that woman could have a baby was because some of her chromosomes were xx.

My daughter has xy chromosomes. She also has xx chromosomes.

She had a bone marrow transplant via an anonymous match on the international register. Her (generous, thoughtful, kind) donor is a 30 something German man.

Now my daughter has two sets of DNA, her own, with it’s xx chromosomes in her saliva (mixed with her donor’s) and her donor’s, with xy chromosomes in her blood.

If she goes on to have her own children in the future (and her gametes were cryogenically stored prior to chemo) she will technically be a woman with xy chromosomes who has given birth.

However, she is no more male than she is German, or 30 something.

If she hadn’t been born with xx chromosomes she wouldn’t have had any large gametes to store.

So yes, while a small number of babies will be born to ‘women with xy chromosomes’ the existence of chimeras (artificial ones, such as my daughter, and natural born ones, such as baby girls who absorbed male fraternal twins as zygotes) and mosaics (like the woman in the case study) doesn’t mean that xy people aren’t male nor that xy people (men, boys, males) can give birth. That some XY males develop with a female-appearance due to a congenital disorder or genetic fault does not mean they are actually female (but will be raised as female and likely won’t know until the teenage years when menstruation does not begin. These children, who believed themselves to be girls are infertile and some have reported a real struggle to come to terms with learning that they are genetically male).

Chimera girls like my daughter are not ‘intersex’ they are not male and they have no relevance to the trans debate. The only reason some women with xy chromosomes can have babies is because they have mixed dna including xx chromosomes.

Knock it off.

www.nwlpathology.nhs.uk/tests-database/chimerism/

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/dna-bone-marrow-transplant-man-chimera-chris-long-forensic-science-police-a9238636.html

A defination of something does not have to be always true. A hand is a limb with five fingers is a defination of a hand but is not always the case that everyone has five fingers.
Please give a source for your claim that someone born wiith xy chromosomes has given birth.

TheClogLady what a tough time you you and your daughter - hope she is completely better now. You have written a very clear and interesting account and you must get so infuriated with the whole gender ideology stuff.

www.earth.com/news/male-seahorses-give-birth/
This link is good to explain what happens in seahorse ‘mating’ and pregnancy. It also has a gorgeous photo of a wonderful leafy sea dragon.

If humans were the same as seahorses and sea dragons, men would have an external fold of skin (bit like a kangaroo pouch). This pouch is not inside an abdominal cavity (like a mammalian uterus). Women would get up close to men and release (upto) hundreds of eggs as close to this skin pouch as possible. The man would release his sperm from an orifice to fertilise the eggs as the eggs collect in this skin pouch - this obviously only works in water so the fertilisation process at least would have to be in water. The pouch would have nourishing tissues inside that help provide nutrients and oxygen for a few to hundreds of young. Men would be pregnant for 9-45 days and then chose to release/expel upto 1500 babies when the time is right.

Doesn’t sound a very good analogy.

‘For you’ not ‘you you’ that should have said.

The sex equal/doesn't equal gender thing is designed to confuse the conversation.

Years ago, I saw gender used interchangeably with sex, and gender also used as a feminist description of the expectations imposed on both, but particularly the female, sex. It was always clear from the context which definition was intended - the denist wanted to know a patients sex, not the ways society expected the patient to think of everyone elsesneeds before their own.

What's new are the ideas that sex is complicated and difficult to define (never had a problem knowing who got the vote); gender is a feeling; gender is a class separate from sex and how we separated people for safety and dignity, and person can be born one sex and change into another.

We could probably cope with other definitions for gender, but we need to be clear which definition we are talking about. But genderists don't want us to be clear what we are talking about, because they dont want women to be able to exclude men from discussions and spaces.

So any definition of "female" needs to be adequately worded to account for any possible chromosome mutation in any person on the planet to be useable.

But the definition of "woman" is just, er, it's, well it's unhelpful and unkind to even ask, you bigot.

(That wasn't meant to be a response to the previous post, just a general observation! )

Indeed. The double standards and hypocrisy of this movement are breathtaking.

Another one: gender identity is a super personal quality no one can know about another person until they are told, but AT THE SAME TIME far more pertinent to how other people treat you than mere sex to the degree that there is no need for sex specific protections and spaces, only gender-specific ones.

The 'don't challenge anyone in the toilets, they are using the space they are most comfortable in' signs are the clearest indication that genderists want to remove womens ability to define ourselves in any meaningful way. Now we cant exclude men, because men 'know' they should be included.

I don't understand how anyone can use the existence of DSD in these arguments. First of all they apply to a tiny number of people and why the focus on these disorders? The average number of arms and legs for each human is less than 2 but no one would disagree with you if you described a human as having two arms and two legs. If you tried people would think you were a bit mad.

What happens with these people who latch onto these ideologies is that they take the cases of a very small number of people who are very unusual and seek to apply them across the board to everyone to try and substantiate their cases. This is of course totally unscientific. And immoral too.

Its a way of changing the subject. Instead of talking about why adult men want to be in the women changing rooms at H&M, we are having to talk about rare medical diagnisis . Instead of protecting women right to organise without men, we are questioning if women is the same female.

Its because men have always assumed what they want, they get. They create an absurd concept of 'transition' to justify it, when that concept doesn't hold up to any scrutiny, they doubled down and question sex. Its madness that we tolerate it really, because they aren't going to stop, just deny what they said 5 minutes ago and come up with more ridiculous reasons.

This must be the talk you went to FrankTheThunderbird which can be downloaded for £3

www.greenbelt.org.uk/product/lost-in-trans-lation/?attribute_pa_media=download

My thoughts are that being welcomed at Greenbelt automatically gives the ideology a (misplaced in my opinion) moral righteousness and those panelists do seem to believe that they occupy that moral high ground.

The main message I heard, which is the same message I've heard before from so many trans people, is that there is something incredibly unique about them. A uniqueness that us ordinary mortals find hard to understand but requires lots of love and kindness to be directed towards them.

Btw the comment about not giving advice as it would be illegal appears to have been alluding to 'street hormones' and wasn't in reply to the 12 year olds question.

The same panel can be heard in this podcast too...

The main message I heard, which is the same message I've heard before from so many trans people, is that there is something incredibly unique about them. A uniqueness that us ordinary mortals find hard to understand but requires lots of love and kindness to be directed towards them.

To be fair, they have managed to get the state to give grown arsed men 'female' birth certificates and passports (I still have no idea why) and lots, even women who claim to be feminists, talk about 'trans women' as if they aren't just men, so I can see how that went to their heads.

Btw the comment about not giving advice as it would be illegal appears to have been alluding to 'street hormones' and wasn't in reply to the 12 year olds question.

Thank you. I jumped to the wrong conclusion. Thankfully.

This is a conversation between Alex Clare-Young and Sarah Hobbs about their trans experience.
Alex is a transmasculine non-binary minister with the United Reformed Church... Sarah is a trans woman

Some quotes from Alex and Sarah:

“Gender stereotypes need to end and we just need to be able to exist as who we are.” – Alex Clare-Young

What makes Alex 'transmasculine' and 'non-binary' other than stereotypes?

“In what way – in any way at all – is a trans person hurting you? Are they affecting your life in any way? Are they causing you difficulty in any way? Absolutely not. And you can choose not to interact with people. And so why people are going out of their way to make life difficult for trans people – it just doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever. If you’re really that bothered, then just leave them alone and focus on something more positive in your life rather than trying to tear down a group of people who are just trying to survive and be happy.” – Sarah Hobbs

Sarah needs to meet some of the people affected by this, who can't choose not to interact with trans people, such as trans widows, female prisoners and women who want to access female-only services.

@JustSpeculation "Can't we just define it by reproductive role? Whether your investment in human reproduction is 9 months or nine minutes?
9 minutes!!! Can I have his number? 😉

@Musomama1 Maybe it has been more 'sex', but my maternity unit still refers to gender scans and what about gender reveal parties? People ask you, what gender is your baby bump etc.
I've just checked all my family birth certificates (dated between 1960-2001) and they ALL have sex NOT gender. Gender reveal parties are a very new phenomenon and the last time I was pregnant (2001) people asked "is it a girl or boy". Your experience is not universal.

The main message I heard, which is the same message I've heard before from so many trans people, is that there is something incredibly unique about them. A uniqueness that us ordinary mortals find hard to understand but requires lots of love and kindness to be directed towards them.

I find the psychology of all this interesting. As a PP said, look at the Twitter bio of many of these people and there will be a list of their “labels”. Why on Earth do they need so many ways to define themselves (rather than just being a person with a personality)? And it’s coupled with perpetual insistence that they’re a) very special and b) at risk of terrible harm and violence. You’ve only got to look at the OP to see an example of the conviction that “They want to erase us and deny our existence” - why is there so often the Kevin-esque leap from “You disagree with me” to “You want me dead”? If nothing else, it seems perpetually aggrieved and infantilised.

Fascinating but bizarre.