Women's rights general conversations - Thread 3

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of Thread 2.

There is so much excellent information and so many active discussions on FWR that I wondered if it would be useful to have a thread to sort of "cross-fertilise" between them - airing little thoughts or vignettes that wouldn't themselves merit their own thread, to highlight other posts/threads of particular interest or to point to notable developments on fast-moving threads so that casual observers know where to look.

(For example, "the X thread has meandered onto a fascinating discussion of Y" or "Poster P's amazing analysis on thread Z might have relevance to the scenario in thread W" or "Has anybody noticed this recurring theme that keeps coming up??" or even "Random bloke asked me to smile while I was choosing onions, grr"- that sort of thing).

Thanks @nepeta .

Re good trans/bad trans, it's a different sort of good/bad but I caught up with an episode of Antisocial on BBC Sounds yesterday about trans women and women's prisons. They have people from both sides and it's all about polite debate. I had heard the trans woman on a previous episode. Preamble over.

They talked about Isla Bryson and a couple of others, percentage of alleged trans women prisoners who are violent and often sex offenders. The trans woman said that prison is not kind to sex offenders and that she thought that these men were pretending in order to get out of men's prisons. No shit Sherlock. Obviously, I agree but think that it's not just about escaping the male estate but to specifically gain access to the female estate. I don't think she realised quite what she was admitting. She could see, as most of us "bigots" can that if you go along the be kind/of course you're a woman path we invite predators and men who get off on pretending to be women for sexual pleasure into female places and that is what we're arguing. The trans woman didn't get that if it's happening in prisons it's also happening outside prisons and the things that will never happen have been and are happening. She's in favour of self ID and also thinks that there are men who pretend. She didn't manage to see the issue and as it was polite debate wasn't pushed hard. If cognitive dissonance was a sound the noise would have been deafening.

And yet we still have to push back against the ultra-right-wing idiots like Michael Knowles in the US, who said to much applause at the CPAC conference that "there can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. ... Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely."

This is plainly neither desirable nor going to happen, and does smack of persecution, but is so easily conflated with opposition to self-ID and the effect on women's sex-based rights.

Exactly Britinme.

Hadley outlines the hopeful signs:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/defe3100-bab5-11ed-bdd5-81355e256dff?shareToken=df9b013479ba4c199f5885835fa3f9255_

I don't know Micheal Knowles (and if he is ultra right wing can't imagine having much in common with him) and don't know what he means by 'transgenderism' or 'public life' but I see eradicating genderism as entirely positive.

It's a belief system that is homophobic, misogynist, rooted in enforcing conformity to sex-role stereotypes. It pathologises neurodiversity, encourages some people with mental health issues to undergo unnecessary and deeply damaging (though very profitable for a pharma industry that took a dip after the opiates scandal) 'treatments' and surgery. It forces women to abandon safe spaces hard-won over centuries in order to indulge other people with mental health issues. And cheers on the exhibitionists and fetishists and voyeurs riding in with them.

It is a source of much human misery, particularly female misery, since keeping women 'in their place' is at the heart of the ideology. No wonder it's popular in Iran, as a way (involuntary) of letting gay men survive but marking them as inferior. Only gay men - there's no way Iranian women can gain male status by transitioning. Apart from giving a lot of academics something to write about, and making money for pharma, has nothing to justify its continued existence.

Lesbians - lets encourage them to be happy and safe. Men who want to wear dresses, adopt traditional women's name, have sex with or marry other men - hooray, good for them.

No-one can change sex, and gender is not a real thing.

@DeanVolecapeAKAelderberry - he's ultra-right American speaking at the American CPAC meeting. I agree with you about gender ideology, but I think you may be missing the point of his speech. He isn't arguing for the kind of freedom from stereotyping you're talking about but about things like banning men from presenting in a stereotypically "feminine" way associated with transwomen (and I assume the same with transmen).

This goes counter to the Libertarian streak that underpins most right-wing conservatism in the US, in which people should be free to do whatever they want with their bodies. Of course we then come smack up against the question of conflicting rights.

Indeed, I get the impression that many American far-right representatives have far more in common with the genderists than they have with (2nd wave) feminists and I would like to see that called out. Instead there seems to be a very muddled situation of mutually opposed ideologies being adopted by people thinking of themselves as 'left' or 'right'.

And no debate feeds that by preventing people from taking a close look at what is really there.

Thanks to @Britinme and others who responded to my question about segments within the transwomen population. It does seem difficult to get these data, if they even exist.

Something I've seen a lot refers to the proportion of transwomen who are fully biologically male, not on a pathway of transition beyond costumery. I've seen a figure of 80% here but I've no idea of its origin. Perhaps testimony at one of the tribunals or court cases? And there was something from one of the barristers, I think from the TRA side, for want of a better term, who referred to "part-time cross-dressers" IIRC. Perhaps the same barrister?

Sorry to go on about this. It just seems such an enormous gap in our understanding. To take an example from elsewhere, there have been a great many studies of culture in the NHS, where beliefs, experiences, attitudes and behaviours are examined. I don't think I've ever seen a respectable one that does not segment the findings according to role, profession, length of service and essential demographics. And then, of course, you can test for heterogeneity and pool where there isn't any. Surely somebody, somewhere must be making an attempt at this? Or is it a career-ending area for the nonce?

@nepeta many thanks for that critique of the neuro study, which was spot on.

Up to now there has been very little robust statistical data involving population figures because there is no clear definition of what constitutes "trans". At its widest point it's the whole "umbrella" which also includes part time cross dressers, as well as people who don't meaningfully claim to live as the opposite sex but identify as "non binary"/"genderfluid"/"agender".

However we now have the census figures for those who answered the question. So then it comes down to which of those figures to use.

But what we do know is that of all the people who fall under the "trans umbrella" only a tiny minority have genital surgery (less than 5% the last time any figures were submitted to the 2016 trans inquiry by the government).

3-post ment.

Any views on posting my question on MN more widely, i.e. not just here? Or I guess I could ask Helen Joyce through twitter, but I don't know how to do that.

I think the 80% figure is from a survey asking people if they intended to have the surgery in the future. Only 20% said yes.

Thanks @Ereshkigalangcleg

There are lots of threads which deal with this, you could try a search, or you could start one, lots of people here will have the sources for those data. I don't right now but I do somewhere.

You could start a thread on this board, I mean, I wouldn't do it on AIBU

And there was something from one of the barristers, I think from the TRA side, for want of a better term, who referred to "part-time cross-dressers" IIRC.

Part time cross dresser was term used by Maya Forstater to describe Phillip/Pippa Bunce after he was named as one of the top 100 women in business

twitter.com/mforstater/status/1501139446359601153?

www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/gender-fluid-exec-named-on-list-of-top-100-women-in-business-a3942896.html

The phrase was put forward at her tribunal as an example of her discriminatory language, and but this was countered by pointing out that Stonewall includes cross-dressers under its definition of trans.

Trans
An umbrella term to describe people whose gender is not the same as, or does not sit comfortably with, the sex they were assigned at birth.
Trans people may describe themselves using one or more of a wide variety of terms, including (but not limited to) transgender, transsexual, gender-queer (GQ), gender-fluid, non-binary, gender-variant, crossdresser, genderless, agender, nongender, third gender, bi-gender, trans man, trans woman, trans masculine, trans feminine and neutrois.

www.stonewall.org.uk/list-lgbtq-terms

www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/06/maya-forstater-was-discriminated-against-over-gender-critical-beliefs-tribunal-rules

Neutrois? Okay, just looked it up and it is a real word although it's also another gender word soup piss take. I read the full stonewall trans definition a couple or so years ago and it turned out I was trans without knowing it because the umbrella is so large it could cover Wembley stadium.

I have seen several online surveys on this, at least two with large numbers of trans people responding, but the problem with all such surveys is that they are self-selecting so can't, strictly speaking, be generalised into the whole transgender population. Still, there is quite a bit of such evidence and none producing the reverse findings (e.g. that almost all trans women have genital surgery, say).

This is a study which gives some data for both trans men and trans women. tau.amegroups.com/article/view/25593/html

I read it quickly and can't vouch for it. But the rates of surgery do seem to be fairly low.

The far-right tends to believe that girls should play with dolls, that gender roles are tied to biology and inherently unavoidable.

The gender identitarians believe that if a child plays with dolls, the child might be a boy, and that gender roles are not tied to biology, but inherently unavoidable. So being a woman means accepting those gender roles, just as it does in the far-right theology.

The difference is that anyone can choose to be this new concept of 'woman', as long as the person agrees to behave according to sexist female stereotypes, whereas those stereotypes are tied to biology in the far-right framework.

The far-right also believes that only men do heroic things in the public sector. The gender identity ideology posthumously transes famous women in history, because it seems that only men do heroic things in the public sector.

Those are some of the ways the horseshoe theory applies to this question in politics. Both are also deeply sexist, and this can be seen among the far right in how its decision power is clearly held by men in public spaces, in gender identity theology this can be seen currently in how only the female sex is being erased (we are now egg producers, vulva havers etc.), while the male sex is carefully left alone (no sperm producers, ejaculators etc.) and still called men and boys.

The gender critical approach does share something with the far-right views, and that has to do with the biology-based (lived experience) definition of 'woman.' But the goals of the far right are diametrically opposed to the goals of gender critical feminism:

The former need to have a clear name for the female sex in order to subjugate and control it (and its reproductive, sexual, and support-role resources), the latter need that clear name to fight against those exact attempts.

So yes, overall the gender identity ideology is a giant leap backwards in women's rights. It tries to return to 1950s gender roles (perhaps because if those rule then a man can transition by simply following all those rigid rules, while if they do not rule, then transitioning is harder as everyone ends up gender-nonconforming).

Anyone can get endometriosis apparently, but risk factors vary by sex assigned at birth. 🙄

twitter.com/healthline/status/1631302843222179844?s

Interesting figures in your study @nepeta, particularly the higher rates of surgery in FTM people. The rates of males having genital surgery are clearly low (in the US at least), and I've never seen any evidence to the contrary. It's quite striking, when the procedure for female bodies is more difficult.

In general, GCS is more common in transgender men than in transgender women, and least common in gender non-binary or nonconforming populations. Transgender men self-report GCS prevalence at rates of 42–54%, while transgender women report it at around 28%, and non-binary individuals at around 9% (7,8). By one study, a transgender male identity was associated with an odds ratio for having had GCS of 1.87, compared with being transgender female (9).

Across transgender populations, chest (“top”) surgery is more common than genitourinary reconstructive (“bottom”) surgery. Chest surgery is generally reported at about twice the rate of genital GCS. In studies that assessed transgender men and women as an aggregate, chest surgery has been reported at rates between 8–25%, and genital surgery at 4–13% (8,9). This could be due to a number of factors. Chest surgery may be more important to outward gender expression for many individuals, as the presence or absence of breast tissue is more readily visible in daily life than are the genitalia. Chest surgery is likely more accessible as well, as most plastic surgeons are familiar with breast augmentation and mastectomy for non-gender affirming implications, while relatively few are trained in techniques required for transgender genital reconstruction (36).

Genital GCS is generally less common than chest surgery, with prevalence rates of about 25–50% for transgender men and 5–10% for transgender women (7,9,32). For transgender women, genital GCS comprises a number of procedures, including vaginoplasty (most commonly intestinal or penile inversion) with labiaplasty and/or clitoroplasty, penectomy, and orchiectomy. Transgender women report bottom surgery at rates between 5–13% (7-9,32). Even more transgender women desire bottom surgery in the future: between 45–54% (7,9). Among non-binary people assigned male at birth, 1% have had vaginoplasty or labiaplasty, and 11% desire these in the future (7).

@Ereshkigalangcleg

Interesting figures in your study @nepeta, particularly the higher rates of surgery in FTM people. The rates of males having genital surgery are clearly low (in the US at least), and I've never seen any evidence to the contrary. It's quite striking, when the procedure for female bodies is more difficult.

Yes, that struck me, too. The negative side effects are more common and more severe in phalloplasty than in vaginoplasty.

That endometriosis thing is insane so I went to look and apparently, there have been 16 cases in actual men but all of them were men who had had long-term hormone treatment with female hormones. My suggestion would be that what these very, very few men were suffering from was something akin to endometriosis and not actual endometriosis.

Of course, the people who published that article know full well that endometriosis is a female health issue and the pretence that it isn't is absolutely bloody pathetic.

just read the Erica Anderson Telegraph article via the MSN link on another thread and got this WaPo article as my suggested next read…

Brit Awards, the Sequel?

www.msn.com/en-us/movies/oscars/the-push-to-ditch-best-actor-and-best-actress-for-gender-neutral-awards/ar-AA18d6Or

Interesting likes to dislikes ratio tho!

There’s a ratio.

And here’s some light relief. Don’t know if Mary Bourke is well known but I’ve come across her for the first time tonight. I shall be adopting the term SMURF.

vm.tiktok.com/ZMYPNAAbB