Gender theory seems completely illogical? Or is it me?

[Elsiebear90]

I feel like I’m living in some bizarre twilight zone where most people just blindly accept and believe in something which to me appears to be completely illogical, and no one (other than a small minority of people) is talking about this, does anyone feel the same? It’s making me think maybe there’s something I’m missing or maybe I’m the wrong one?

So up until coming onto mumsnet a few years ago I blindly believed in gender theory and would defend it to the hilt. Looking back I think it’s because as a lesbian I believed it was the same as homosexuality and that it was just the right thing to do and didn’t really question any of it or think about it too deeply.

I came onto mumsnet and saw a lot of debate around the topic and started to realise that there are huge holes and contradictions in gender theory and that the science behind it is weak at best and non existent at worse. I then started to really challenge my beliefs and do more research into the topic and have now come to the point where I don’t believe in gender at all, beyond it being a social construct.

What is bizarre is that despite there being to me huge contradictions within gender theory, no one really talks about them, the whole world minus a few people labelled as bigots or T*RFs seems to have just hopped on board and is now blindly preaching this and condemning anyone who merely questions the ideology.

For anyone wondering what I mean by it being illogical, to summarise:

• If being a woman is adhering to gender “norms” for women then how do women like butch lesbians fit into this?
• If the criteria for being a woman is “identifying as one” and anyone can identify as a woman for any reason then the term woman is now meaningless
• If no one can define what it means to be a woman why is it so important for men to identify as one and have this validated?
• If being non-binary means not adhering to gender stereotypes does this not just reinforce gender stereotypes? Because we are essentially saying if you don’t follow the gender stereotypes for women it’s because you aren’t a woman, isn’t this harmful and regressive?

All this applies to trans men too, but I just refer to trans women as they seem to be the most vocal.

In attempt to see what I was not understanding I went onto some trans boards across the internet to see how they addressed these questions and what I found was shocking. In regards to “what is a woman” the general consensus was “anyone who identifies as one”, when people pushed further and replied that this doesn’t answer the question the general response was to not engage in any debate with anyone asking as it was a trap or trick question posed by T*RFs and bigots. How on earth is this a trick question? Surely it is the most important question to ask given the whole debate centres around it? If the people pushing so hard to be labelled as a woman and “treated as a woman” don’t even know what a woman is does this not just show how crazy gender theory really is?

Sorry for the ramblings, but I’m just having a WTF moment really and doubting myself as I seem to be the only person in my circle who thinks like this and I don’t feel comfortable discussing this with anyone outside my circle for fear or being labelled a bigot or T*RF.

Welcome to TERF Island.

It’s true… the Emperor has no clothes….

Yes everything you say is correct.
I too have times when I feel like I've fallen into a crazy void and none of this can really be happening.
But it is.

Have you sigend the Sex Matters petition to have "sex" clarified in law?

all this "no debate" and demonising anyone who speaks up really works doesn't it.

I'm afraid we all need to hold our heads high, KNOW we aren't bigots and start to speak up.

You did well to get any answers at all on TRA boards. I’ve tried - nothing (certainly nothing I’d actually repeat!)
I’ve also tried asking our occasional visitors her - nothing
I find it frustrating that nobody will actually engage online or irl, eventually I concluded their argument must be too weak to stand up to any scrutiny

Not sure what to say, apart from "yes".

But I'll throw in one of my favourite talks on the subject - Rebecca Reilly Cooper Critically Examining the doctrine of gender identity.

She tears the whole illogical mess to shreds, has fun trying to reach the end of circular definition loops, and also demonstrates how it's an synthetic construction engineered to satisfy certain conditions people needed to justify their "rights" claims.

I didn’t actually post anything I just googled my questions along with trans board and it brought up threads where people (including trans and “non binary” people) has asked the question themselves or asked for help of how to answer it. I was expecting some kind of answer that I didn’t necessarily agree with, but would help me understand their reasoning, I was gobsmacked to see that not a single person could answer the question across multiple threads beyond “anyone who identifies as one”, which obviously isn’t an answer at all.

It made me realise how crazy this whole gender theory really is when the most basic questions can’t be answered and that’s when I really just got off the train.

I feel like they deep down know it’s illogical and doesn’t make sense and that’s why anyone who attempts to even question it is immediately shut down. That’s how I suppose I was originally “recruited into gender theory”, because I wasn’t exposed to any opposition and thought any opposition just came from bigots.

If being a woman is adhering to gender “norms” for women then how do women like butch lesbians fit into this?

Easy. You are actually men.

Nobody actually believes you can change sex. Those that go along with it are either thick, deluded, making money from it or they really hate women.

I also found all the underpinnings full of contradictions.

There is supposedly this thing called an abstract gender identity which is NOT based on living in a sexed body and learning how the society sees you and defines you etc., but is some innate unchanging thing, but also always possibly fluctuating and changing. (This, by the way, is the most crucial weapon the TRAs have: They argue that we all share the gender identity ideology belief in a gender identity that is independent of the sex of the body, even though we do not.)

So it is imperative to alter the body with surgeries and medications, but it is also imperative to argue that no man needs to change anything at all to identify as a woman (haven't seen this argued for women). Because a person has always been the gender they now have decided to be, though transitioning is also a journey through nonbinary to trans etc.

And the socially created idea of 'gender' is both more important than biological sex in deciding what rights people have (even if all people have the latter but most don't believe in the former), but also completely up to what a trans person decides it might be, including expressing gender by resorting to extreme misogynist stereotypes about what women are, and now that is progressive, too.

And gender identity, the abstract, hidden one is something people absolutely know they are, but still everyone else must be forced to validate it over and over and over again, because it is both extremely strong and extremely fragile. Both not a health issue at all, but also a health issue deserving priority in the NHS etc.

Sexual orientation also becomes a total mess when it is turned into a genderual orientation. The attempts to try to define that are extreme contortions, each leading in a cul-de- sac. For instance, if Lesbians and gays are now supposed to be attracted to particular gender expression, then butch Lesbians would not attract any Lesbians and effeminate gay men would not attract any gay men. And non-binary people? Can they be homogenderual???

nepeta 👏👏👏

None of it makes any sense OP, I had the same Damascene conversion as you did after stumbling on FWR when I was looking for DIY advice (on MN, not in FWR).

The other thing that really pisses me off about it all is the way TRAs disingenuously equate racism and GC, as if segregation of men and women in certain spaces is some kind of civil rights barrier that needs to be broken down, equivalent to apartheid. It's ridiculous and offensive, as it conveniently places women in the oppressor role, when the only reason sex segregated spaces need to exist at all is because of the oppression of women by men.

The whole world has gone mad.

No @Elsiebear90 you are not alone.

It's contradictory, against everything we know about humans as a sexually dimorphic species, and so, so insidious.

I know an academic who is married to a transperson. This academic is lovely and we've worked together for years. For years I wasn't questioning of any of this. Recently however, like the OP I've been questioning things - in my own mind. However, I am desperate to have a conversation about it with my academic colleague. She's so clever and knowledgeable, approachable and lovely. I've always agreed with her views on everything at work and I would honestly love to just ask these questions to her - not in a provocative way but genuinely to hear the answers. But obviously I can't say anything.

It's entirely illogical. For one, to identify as a woman you have to start with the premise that a woman is a female, and then simultaneously deny this.

All this stuff about sex aligning with gender or not - relies on the very premise that female sex "aligns with" woman-gender.

Your sex is entirely separate from your gender, but your gender is what sex you are.

Either gender does have something to do with physical bodies, or it's an innate feeling - this changes depending on what they're trying to argue.

Plus it's massively homophobic, of course.

Imagine if as a fully able bodied person, I identify as disabled and then claimed benefits designed to help disabled people with the extra costs that come with being disabled. I’d probably be prosecuted. People would say I’m drawing vital resources from people with genuine disabilities.

But if as a man I identify as a woman and then win a women’s’ scholarship, no one is allowed to criticise, let alone prosecute me, even though it would be drawing resources from genuine women who need it. It’s utter bollocks.

Yes this is what gets me. By their own arguments, the only real distinction between men and women is sex.

Transwomen are women is a logical fallacy because of course if they were women, they'd be... women. So they are different from women but at the same time supposedly the same?

NO WONDER they shout 'no debate' at the slightest hint of any questioning. Its a house of cards built on sand and they know it!

Thanks for the link, that was a really interesting talk!

This is how I felt when I first stumbled across this.

You are right though, there is no logic to this and very little truth. Words mean what the people with power want them to mean at any given time.

The power is implicit and it is now ‘not the done thing’ to challenge anyone who claims it under the trans umbrella.

And this power results in gay men and lesbians being thrown out of Pride matches by (straight) queer people, gender dysphoria is now claimed not to be a requirement for a trans identity (so what is trans?) and women and girls all over the country are losing our single sex spaces despite the sexual assaults associated with mixed sex facilities (Primark seems to have a particular problem) and they refuse to revert the policies back to single sex to prevent them.

We have gone straight through the looking glass and it is going to take years to pull everyone back to reality. We must keep trying though - I am gutted for my daughters.

There is an interesting dichotomy on the Politicslive thread. One trans person is challenging another trans person’s right to self identify as trans.

As Stonewall dictated that we must all believe people are who they say they are, I find this rather intriguing and off message.

The contradictions are endless once you start to examine any of it critically. To genderists, sex is either just a social construct, comes in at least 6 forms even though people only ever talk about MTF or FTM, is a spectrum, is either completely integral to gender identity (hence why some people modify their bodies) or wholly independent of it.

All this applies to trans men too, but I just refer to trans women as they seem to be the most vocal

Thats because they are men.

🤔 Umm, interesting😆! So say I, biological woman, who has, and has never had, any interest in being anything other than a woman, could now decide to also identify as "trans". " Trans" as in transition, from woman to woman, passing through space and time, linking myself to the mysterious energy that is a gender soul, travelling through the sky on a brightly coloured rainbow. Back to my roots, my true woman self.
If I ever feel in need to infuse mystique into my ordinary existence, then I'm relieved this option is open to me😂

All excellent questions!

Having known several trans people over the years I was very much “live & let live” and “I’m sure we can come to reasonable accommodations with a bit of good will” I accidentally revealed that I don’t believe* people can change sex - I didn't think ANYBODY sane really thought that the same way as I don’t think anyone honestly believes the moon is made of green cheese - and that I know TW are a subset of men.

And so I became the face of evil & a Fundamentalist Christian Right Wing Genocidal Nazi White Supremacist Radicalised By A Hate Group - all things I have been called.

Funny old world.

• I’m saying “believe” rather than “know” because it’s possible for facts to be disbelieved...