Yvette Cooper on LBC

[Flowerly]

Did anyone else hear this? She just clearly said that there are differences between what she called 'biological women' and TW and that just because you change your gender does not mean that you change your sex! I almost fell over in shock.

Is this the start of a full on turnaround from the LP? Will I be able to vote for them again? I so want to!

Of course 'cisgender' is a made up term. We have a need to differentiate between groups of people so we can talk concisely and inclusively

Why can't you just have women and transwomen? Women is more concise than ciswomen which many women feel is insulting to them. So when we talk about respecting the feelings of others, why is it expected that women respect the feelings of others but others don't need to respect the feelings of women?

Or just women and men?

Trans women know they are men. It isn't going to be a shock to their system. Nobody will die if we just use women and men, boys and girls. Honest.

This

Women and men, girls and boys. That is all we need for the smooth functioning of society.

The rest is someone else’s faith based beliefs and shouldn’t be imposed on nonbelievers.

Any of the parties could introduce Self ID. The Conservatives were all ready to do exactly that at one point. They all have issues with TRAs in their membership. They all have their GC members fighting on the inside, too.

Rishi Sunak did just what Yvette Cooper has just done. A month or two ago, he was unable to say what a woman is. Now, just before the election, he has made up his mind. Yvette Cooper has done the same.

I don't know why you got the idea that non-binary people and trans-gender people never refer to or speak about their sex.

@TraumatisedGooner

would you care to tell me the approved / acceptable word or term for the group of people that includes: transmen, afab enbies, cis women, women who are completely unfamiliar with gender ideology, and women who are familiar with gender ideology but reject it, but does not include transwomen, amab enbies, cis men, men who are unfamiliar with gender ideology and men who are familiar with gender ideology but reject it.

Because I'll be the first to say that's a pretty unwieldy phrase.

Proponents of these terms use them as adjectives. It's not 'ciswoman', it's 'cis woman'. In the vast majority of contexts I would refer to cis women and trans women as women, much as I imagine in the vast majority of contexts you would refer to gay women as women and straight women as women. In contexts where it is necessary to differentiate based on sex, I would use the adjectives 'cis' and 'trans' much as I imagine you would use the adjectives 'straight' and 'gay'.

Sorry but that's just not true. Sunak said in the leadership hustings in August last year that a transwoman is not a woman.
Cooper, on the other hand, a mere 7 weeks ago, refused to even answer questions on the subject.
They are not the same at all.

And I'm saying that you don't need the adjective 'cis' because a lot of women find that term objectionable. Women is a definition of its own. Just like transwomen is. And those two terms,already distinguish their sex. You don't need adjectives for them because they already have a noun that defines them.

In all contexts I would refer to women as women and men as men. Sometimes with the addition of an adjective such as "tall", or perhaps "gay". Adjectives add detail to a noun. They don't make it mean something completely different.

Biological women as opposed to…non-biological women? Are we some kind of washing powder?

@TraumatisedGooner But “gender” and the “c” word aren’t used to differentiate between the sexes - we already have two words that allow us to do this: male/female.

Using the g/c words just let people around you know that you subscribe to gender ideology.

We have a need to differentiate between groups of people so we can talk concisely and inclusively

Sure, but implicit in that need is the need to know who those groups actually are.

It's not, for example, valid to use "cis-women" to mean "all female people who don't identify as trans".

This is because the only definition of "woman" that is valid in the construction "trans-woman" is the one that defines womanhood as a mental gender. It has to be, because no other definition of womanhood can accommodate male bodies.

But by using that definition of woman, you are relinquishing the one that means "female bodied". You can't use one definition of woman in trans-woman and a different definition in cis-woman and at the same time claim they are both types of woman just cos you used the same word!

Trans- and cis- therefore simply differentiates between two groups that share a mental gender. To the degree that you might need to talk about those specific groups, trans- and cis- allows you to talk concisely and inclusively, but it doesn't allow you to talk concisely an inclusively about the two groups of trans-women and what, for want of a better phrase, I'll call "female people who are not trans" because there's no reason to assume all non-trans female people have the same mental gender as trans women.

The way you use language reflects your beliefs.

I believe that woman and man are sex based terms therefore cis/trans is as meaningless to me as other belief based terms are to non believers. A man who says he is a woman is just a man to me and vice versa so no special terminology is needed.

Call yourself whatever you like, most people will still secretly, or if they are in a position to do so, openly, acknowledge what your actual sex is and most people would appreciate it if you’d be considerate enough to use the services appropriate for your sex rather than making the opposite sex uncomfortable.

TraumatisedGooner

I am puzzled by this. I have an acquaintance who would not describe himself as straight or gay (or bi for that matter). I believe lots of people would describe him as asexual. He doesn't like that label and wouldn't describe himself as asexual but says he doesn't feel sexual attraction to anyone so he isn't straight or gay or bi. (This came up in conversation about which boxes to tick in the census)

Are you saying everyone must be straight or gay or bi? It certainly would be insulting for me to call him straight just as a shorthand for a person who doesn't believe he is gay or bi. How could I possibly correctly identify his sexual orientation if he says he can't? He doesn't have an orientation towards anyone as far as he can tell.

Sorry that this was confusing! I was mimicking the post I quoted in hopes that it would illustrate why people shouldn't reject adjectives like 'cis' for the same reason they shouldn't reject adjectives like 'straight'.

From your description your acquaintance fits the definition of asexual. I hope that his rejection of that label isn't based on shame.

Hear hear @PomegranateOfPersephone

people shouldn't reject adjectives like 'cis' for the same reason they shouldn't reject adjectives like 'straight'.

"Religious/Atheist" are an opposing pair of adjectives. However the fact that a person can legitimately and meangfully be described as Religious doesn't mean God actually exists, nor that Atheist has any significance beyond labelling an absence of belief.

If you're trying to indicate there's an equivalence between 'cisgender' and 'atheist'... I'm not sure why?

But he’s technically correct. That is the case under EQA 2010, as ridiculous as it may seem. 13 years ago, this act was passed, providing for males to become women in the eyes of the law

Well, because you introduced the idea of different adjective pairs being equivalent when you used gay/straight to make some sort of point about cis/trans despite them being totally different concepts, so I was following your lead.

“I believe that woman and man are sex based terms”

It would make sense if they were, but a male with a GRC is legally a woman, so as much as we would like to hold on to the definition of woman as “adult human female”, it’s not always the case

Crazy

Cis is more like heretic, in the sense that it's a word that only makes sense within the bounds of a certain ideology and is offensive when you are talking about people who don't agree with that ideology.

In feminist ideology, 'gender' is used to describe the system that serves to create and reinforce a hierarchy between the sexes. So it is deeply offensive to a feminist to be called cis, as the opposite of trans, where trans is defined as a state of not identifying with the gender associated with your sex.

To call a feminist cis is to tell her that she is happy with feminine gender roles, essentially that she identifies as being inferior to men. It is hard to express just how offensive it is.

We don't use slurs for transgender people on this forum (and I'd be shocked if posters used them in real life - I certainly never have and never would). Show some respect and don't call people cis unless they choose that label for themselves.

You’re right to be worried. A more likely prospect is that a Labour govt allows the Scottish or Welsh Assemblies to introduce SelfID so it’s introduced in a way in which he can avoid taking responsibility

So, I think there two issues.
The first is that Cooper said he didn't say that and he clearly did. So Cooper lied.
The second is that I don't doubt that it's the case that men have become women in the eyes of the law. And that's what Starmer believes. That men can become women. So why doesn't he just come out and say that the LP believes that men can become women and then state how that impacts on women only spaces. It surely follows if he believes that men are women, they therefore have the right to enter public bathrooms, changing rooms, women only groups, womens sports, etc.
And, actually, I think it would be great for him to make a clear statement. I'd respect him fir saying what be believes abd stands by it. We'd then know what we're voting for. And yet he hums and haws over expressing his actual belief and sends other labour mps out for people to take potshots at so he can stand back and say nothing.
Plus now he's putting self declared men into women's spaces while announcing he's going to halve violence against women. These policies are just shifting sand.