All women/women and transwomen. How do the dynamics change?

[waterwitch]

I’m in a local women’s charity group. There has been a suggestion that we should consider allowing transwomen (realistically a transwoman) to join. Just wondering if anyone would like to relate their experiences of this situation. I do have an idea of how the dynamics might play out, but would prefer to base this on actuality than my personal stereotyping iyswim

Sorry, was faffing around while writing the response! Too slow

😂😂😂

It's all about looking inclusive. 🙄

I'll say that a lot of people would, and do, say that trans women aren't women. Which is completely wrong. Trans women are absolutely women no question about it

On the contrary, there are endless questions about it. Most people in fact know that transwomen are male, including themselves, because if they weren't they wouldn't be trans would they, and gender isn't sex so....

Can you please explain all the things that make transwomen the same as women but different to other men without using feelings, appearance or sexist stereotypes?

I'm in an informal poetry group, all women of all ages. Not specifically a women's group, that's just the way it happened. We used to have a Facebook page where we would post poems, inspiration, craft projects, whatever. The sheer amount of dirty limericks and almost pornographic material from TW accounts meant we had to shut it down. 95% of the accounts had Tranwoman or Transgirl in the bio.

For any reader wanting to see a live demonstration of extreme trans rights tactics and just how male pattern behaviour doesn’t truly change with transition, catch this thread quickly before it is deleted.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4715126-heres-why-need-to-stop-going-on-about-chromosomes?page=1

sorry this link should work

Yep… just being a girl!!

I discovered that ‘just being a girl’ thing when I found a period play incest peppa pig fantasy being recounted to my 14 year old from their school friends who claimed to have created it with their new friends on the internet. The new friends, I was assured were all teen aged LGBT girls of 13- 14 years old !

Yes. They were all girls and all 13- 14!!

Now what 14 year old girls do you know make up stories of peppa pig with period and incest fetishes?

But it is kind to include someone into a group on the basis of what they say they are, isn’t it????

@Whatsnewpussyhat
There is a distinction between sex and gender. Gender is a neuro-chemical reaction in the brain, normally along the lines of "I identify as a woman therefore I am a women". This is not a choice and also is something all cis people do. Sex is a person's individual biological markers, this exists and is entirely separate to gender. In everyone's day to day life you always use gender to refer to anything rather than sex, this is why there are stereotypical renditions of "Man" and "Woman" on toilet doors as opposed to the biological markers of male and female. Neither sex nor gender is a binary. Sex and gender are almost always congruent however for a minuscule amount of people they are incongruent, these being trans people. Trans people should have as much right to say "I identify as a woman therefore I am one" as any cis person who identifies themselves the same way. This is because, I restate, that woman is referring to gender rather than sex. If you do categorise using sex rather than gender then you will overlook assigned female at birth people who do not fit into the binary because sex, as well as gender, is a spectrum. In summary trans women are the same as women because "Woman" is an umbrella term that describes both trans and cis women. This is exactly the same for trans men.
(Sources: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexanddgenderdistinction

twitter.com/rebeccarhelm/status/1207834357639139328?s=46&t=VAjMGsL8geOYm4X4Sc8AUA)

There's no such thing as "cis", it's an ideological in-group term most people don't use.

Women don't come in two sexes, or men.

Cis is a well documented term
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender

Astroturfing. Wikipedia is not a reliable source. It's an ideological term which makes no sense if you don't subscribe to gender identity ideology. Furthermore, it's offensive to most women on this feminist board, and applying it to specific people here in a goady way may mean that your posts are deleted.

Here's another Wikipedia article about a similar concept

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_thetan

So Mythro, what about when it is a choice? What if a predatory man says "I identify as a woman" to get put on a female hospital ward then rapes someone? What if a 13yo girl thinks she identifies as a boy because tik tok/peer group/school sex ed lessons tell her she is one if she has short hair and stereotypically masculine interests, gets her breasts cut off and her voice irreversibly deepened, then with maturity realises it was all nonsense and she's just a non-typical woman who was led down a path as an impressionable child?

How are we meant to tell who is "really" trans when the only evidence is someone saying "I'm trans"? Can you not see the dangers with this?

And why does having a "gender identity" that contrasts with your sex mean you should be considered a different sex for the purposes of same-sex spaces or even passports and medical records? Your body has a sex, that doesn't change, so why can't you just be male or female with a feminine or masculine identity/personality (like what some of us have been doing for decades without a fuss)?

And what has "sex is spectrum" got to do with it? It's really not, but if it was, so what? Age, ethnicity, height, disability, these are all really spectrums. So that should mean you can identify as black if you're white, disabled if you're not, 6 if you're 53, right? Because these things are all much more of a spectrum that sex is? And how can you tell someone's age, race or disability isn't genuine - after all it also comes from neurochemicals in their brain, as do all our thoughts?

Sorry that should be:
And how can you tell someone's age, race or disability identity isn't genuine

This thread is a great example of exactly why the dynamics change the moment a man joins a woman’s group - sooo much special pleading and treatment

There is a distinction between sex and gender.

Sex is a person's individual biological markers, this exists and is entirely separate to gender.

The rest of the post is inaccurate, illogical and irrelevant.

It is exactly the example that those who recognise the interaction understand and those who don’t, or don’t want to, dismiss too quickly to keep the dissonance from clanging too loudly!

like those who nod along to posts talking about brains, without understanding that if it was that simple, doctors would be using it as a diagnosis tool already.

Very good point.

Why would you want to allow soneone with a prostate into your group?
Are their no 'prostate owners' support groups available?

It is hilarious to see Wikipedia listed as a source along with a biologist who specialises in marine species.

Have you got anything that is credible?

And sorry, no human should have to right to force the change of definition to a word that another group relies on to describe themselves.

PS Just for readers entertainment. Humans are not clownfish.

In everyone's day to day life you always use gender to refer to anything rather than sex, this is why there are stereotypical renditions of "Man" and "Woman" on toilet doors as opposed to the biological markers of male and female. Neither sex nor gender is a binary.

The reason you don’t have drawings of sex organs on toilet doors, is because it would be inappropriate and vulgar in most cultures and would make people feel uncomfortable. It is more polite to create icons of the entire, stereotypically clothed bodies of women and men, to signify who goes where. It also works for people irrespective of whether they can read or speak the language.

People haven’t always been so coy about the word sex to mean the sexes themselves and not just sexual intercourse between them. Using ‘gender’ instead of sex has crept up - a combination of some people thinking it makes them sound more switched on and aware of feminist discourse on the one hand, and people wanting to avoid suggestions of sexual intercourse (giggle, smirk, tee-hee) when they need to discuss sex differences.

as it is not even a formal women's charity/group, I don't think there is much reasonable basis to deny them.

Hmmm, strange that you describe yourself as a feminist but you question women’s right to keep a group single-sex. Feminism is about centring women, not telling them to move over.

God even the thought of having to deal with the request is stressful.

I run a local support group for women that is aligned to a national organisation. The local meet-ups are arranged via the organisation’s membership web page. The National organisation has said they are “trans women” inclusive. I dread the day that a man asks to attend our local group. I don’t yet know what the other women in the group would think. Having a male person there would undoubtedly alter the dynamic of the group and it would no longer be the female support group that I intended it to be when I set it up. Presumably it could lead to arguments about whether or not a man was entitled to be there. If the other women backed me up we’d presumably have to detach ourselves from the national organisation. If not I’d probably just stop organising it.

Do you know what the other women in the group think about it OP?

It’s probably worth considering that the other women may not be entirely open about what they think (especially in the current political climate) because they won’t know what the reaction of others will be.

I was going to say “what an impressive load of nonsense”. But actually nothing in it is impressive.

Claiming that sex isn’t binary doesn’t change the fact that sex is binary. Nothing in your post changes or even realistically challenges that fact.

Anyone is as welcome to their gender as they are to their favourite colour or football team. It doesn’t change material reality.