School guidelines on gender identities/trans out this week

[ArabeIIaScott]

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/22733965/schools-banned-letting-pupils-change-gender-parents-rishi-sunak/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12208907/PM-says-children-not-allowed-switch-identities-schools-without-telling-parents.html

These are the only two articles I could find so far.

'Schools will be forced to tell parents if students are questioning their gender under new Government guidance to be published this week, according to a report. '

Worst superpower ever - unless you happen to find yourself forming a female gender identity, I suppose - in which case it is pretty fortuitous!

What do you mean by a female gender identity? As others have observed you appear to exhibit quite male characteristics in terms of your attitudes and your lack of empathy or concern for women.

I'm wondering what a male person considers to be the defining features of a female gender identity. As a male person who claims to have a female gender identity you are in an ideal position to explain this.

What are 'quite male characteristics'?

It's hard to discretely define a female gender identity in the way I experience it. It's like...a constellation of statistically linked elements that together describe something almost intangible and linguistically elusive, but which your brain is able to derive a coherent pattern and meaning from over time? I think most people don't really notice it because it never stands out and shows its discontinuities, but I'm definitely aware of mine in the same way that I'm aware when I'm hungry or unwell even if I would struggle to give an exact encapsulation of what it is.

I've always felt an incongruence with my genitalia. I've always felt like there was something back-to-front with my body in a way that's hard to describe. Every child in the family of my generation was female and I - the eldest of the bunch - kept feeling a fundamental sense of wrongness over how I didn't appear to be, at least externally. I desperately wanted to make my military family proud as the sole torch-carrying boy of the pack - the first thing I ever remember wanting to be was a soldier - but I remember when I heard that (back then) women weren't allowed to serve on the front lines, I got really deeply angry in a way that I couldn't really articulate. It somehow felt like I was being told I wasn't allowed, personally. That really did one over on me for a while. Of course with today's wisdom it makes perfect sense that any child would find that notion patently offensive, but this was the mid 80's and none of my siblings or cousins seemed to care or take it personally.

At school, it was fine at first - but as groups formed and things became increasingly silo'd and segregated, it was clear I was in the wrong 'team'. Nothing to do with pink toys and blue toys - hell, I LOVED my toy guns and grandad's old Brodie helmet and was endlessly enraptured with pew pew bang bang stories - but in terms of social dynamics. I couldn't stand the 'boy culture' of the time that would go on to become that tedious and nigh-ubiquitous 'lad culture' blight on the mid-late 90's and upward; the creative, thoughtful playground games I'd tried to cultivate and desperately hold on to were cast aside and replaced with football, football, football and an entire mindset and worldview that just felt alien to me. I got on well with a girl who I'd been sat next to in class and it felt, for the first time, like I'd found someone I saw eye to eye with. I grew my hair long - my mother didn't object and my father was working overseas, not that he'd have cared - and the first day a teacher 'mistook' me for a girl it was just...right? I got so angry that the rest of the class was in hysterics over it that I had my hair cut short - and realised immediately what a mistake that had been as I hated it.

As time passed, puberty loomed - at least, for my classmates. Mine was very sluggish, taking quite some time to arrive - which left me, while not especially short, quite soft in comparison to the lads in class. When it did finally start to take a grip, it was an almost complete non-event. It didn't make me feel insecure, though, as might have been expected.

Well, apart from in the abject hell that was sports lessons, where I can't find a better descriptor for the situation I found myself in outside of 'prey'. If lad culture had a telos, it would have been achieved in the misery of those changing rooms. I knew without even the faintest shred of uncertainty that I was most certainly not a boy by that point and something was very, very definitely and fundamentally wrong. I knew other people for whom the 'boy programming' had failed to take, but this was very clearly something different.

It's hard to discretely define a female gender identity in the way I experience it. It's like...a constellation of statistically linked elements that together describe something almost intangible and linguistically elusive, but which your brain is able to derive a coherent pattern and meaning from over time?

Course it is 🙄 forgive me if I'm not particularly convinced.

Oh, were you hoping I was going to describe it as authentically knowing in your magical angel soul that your brain is painted pink?

I don't believe in your gender identity, so I don't particularly care how you "perceive" yourself, any more than I think Christians have an actual dialogue with God, whatever they think about it.

Do you believe that growing up in a very specific body configuration is the sole factor that defines womanhood? As in, is the sum total of womanhood a specific set of childhood experiences related to 'being embodied as' and 'perceiving being perceived as' a female human that forms and trains a particular neural connectome over around 18 years, and that the shape of that resulting data structure is inherently and essentially female?

What defines womanhood is being an adult human female. That's all.

Given it’s so difficult to describe and impossible to clearly define, we probably shouldn’t organise society and legislation around it then.

Do you believe that growing up in a very specific body configuration is the sole factor that defines womanhood?

Yes. Someone who is born with a female body will grow up to be a woman. Someone who is born with a male body will grow up to be a man. That's just the definition of woman and man. People can't change sex and no one is born in the wrong body.
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a constellation of statistically linked elements that together describe something almost intangible and linguistically elusive, but which your brain is able to derive a coherent pattern and meaning from over time?

This reminded me of something that Shon Faye said ages ago:
[A woman is] A loose, shifting constellation of biological, political and cultural phenomena which varies according to context, place & time

How do you know this is "woman" or a "female gender identity" and not just your own unique personality? If you haven't experienced being female (as you don't have a female body) what makes you think that what you are experiencing is in any way similar to the experience of someone with a female body?

Crikey, that was a lot of words to describe ‘being picked on by other boys’. It’s an unfortunate childhood. It’s unlike being a girl, though, and that’s the puzzling thing.

Why does ‘sad boy’ logically equal ‘girl’ to anyone?

a constellation of statistically linked elements that together describe something almost intangible and linguistically elusive

😂 Crikey we’re all supposed to have one of these gender identity things aren’t we? Makes you wonder how they are so certain that something “almost intangible and linguistically illusive” exists in us all.

the first thing I ever remember wanting to be was a soldier - but I remember when I heard that (back then) women weren't allowed to serve on the front lines, I got really deeply angry in a way that I couldn't really articulate. It somehow felt like I was being told I wasn't allowed, personally.

This doesn't make sense. You were a boy. This wouldn't affect you. This isn't the same as a girl being told she couldn't do this - because you could and she couldn't. No matter if you thought you were a girl in your fantasy world, the rest of the world would still treat you as a boy.

At school, it was fine at first - but as groups formed and things became increasingly silo'd and segregated, it was clear I was in the wrong 'team'. Nothing to do with pink toys and blue toys - hell, I LOVED my toy guns and grandad's old Brodie helmet and was endlessly enraptured with pew pew bang bang stories - but in terms of social dynamics.

A lot of us found social dynamics difficult as children and teenagers. Most of us don't conclude that makes us the opposite sex, though.

I couldn't stand the 'boy culture' of the time that would go on to become that tedious and nigh-ubiquitous 'lad culture' blight on the mid-late 90's and upward; the creative, thoughtful playground games I'd tried to cultivate and desperately hold on to were cast aside and replaced with football, football, football and an entire mindset and worldview that just felt alien to me.

You were the only boy in your school who wasn't obsessed by football? Seems unlikely. But you do realise that preferring the company of girls doesn't make you a girl, don't you?

Well, apart from in the abject hell that was sports lessons, where I can't find a better descriptor for the situation I found myself in outside of 'prey'. If lad culture had a telos, it would have been achieved in the misery of those changing rooms. I knew without even the faintest shred of uncertainty that I was most certainly not a boy by that point and something was very, very definitely and fundamentally wrong.

Sports lessons were pretty grim for non sporty girls, too. But some girls are sporty, and being a non sporty boy doesn't make you a girl. You can't have "known" you weren't a boy, because you were a boy. Boys, like girls, can have any personality. What was fundamentally wrong was thinking you were the opposite sex because you didn't fit in with your own sex.

With the main cohort of teenagers identifying as trans being female, I'm now wondering if my experience of feeling that I didn't fit in as a teen is more common than I thought it was at the time. And they're making the same mistake as Butterfly in thinking that not fitting in makes them "not a girl".

Those posts show it’s not a good idea to completely rearrange society with new legislation as pp pointed out.

It makes more sense to let boys know it’s ok if you are not good at football or PE

There are two female detransitioners in my sixth form maths classes. Anecdotes ain’t evidence, but I’m pretty sure I can extrapolate that to say that teen detransitioners exist in reasonable numbers.

a constellation of statistically linked elements that together describe something almost intangible and linguistically elusive

Statistically linked. Well there's a thing. Did the famously all through history two spirit yada yada pre colonials always use statistics to link their elements way back when I wonder.

Fascinating.

You were the only boy in your school who wasn't obsessed by football? Seems unlikely. But you do realise that preferring the company of girls doesn't make you a girl, don't you?

The sad reality is that this regressive stereotype thinking are actually 2 of the 8 diagnostic criteria of childhood gender dysphoria in the DSM-5 TR.

I was obsessed with football at school. It still plays a massive part in my life. It's never made me question anything about myself. Im just a female who loves football.

These explanations are just SO sexist.

Highly sexist towards boys and girls. To believe that you played creative games in the playground because you weren't a boy...what does that make all males - neanderthals?

Have you not met creative, thoughtful, arty, musical, bookish, non-football playing men? There are literally millions of men who don't enjoy or have any interest in football.

Equally, my daughters spend all their break times kicking a ball around. They don't wear make up, do tiktoks or have any interest in doing their hair/nails. What does that make them?

I have no gender identity. I have no sense of being female other than certainty because of my biology. I'm anaemic from heavy periods, have joint problems from PGP caused by pregnancy -breastfeeding-pregnancy-breasfeeding etc.

My personality and interests aren't very feminine. My appearance is not very feminine. If you were setting a quiz I feel I'd fail the 'woman' score.

I'm sorry you had a miserable time at school. Sadly, not that unusual for GNC boys I fear. We should pour our efforts into that (I do feel like it may be a bit better these days).

But a woman is an adult human female. There is absolutely no other way of defining it.

It is bizarre really. I read all that and thought similar to you Crone. I played with guns, I played with helmets, I was my older brother’s rugby and cricket training partner, never once did I believe I was a boy. And holy fuck! thoughtful games ? This is stereotyping. I also played with dolls (with my older brother), and a slew of ‘thoughtful’ games.

I desperately wanted to be a boy. At puberty I told my mother I was a boy. She told me that was impossible and we cannot change our sex.

Even as a primary schooler, we girls did a huge range of stuff. Often it was sports related sometimes it was ‘thoughtful games’. Sometimes it was using sticks as guns.

It was called being a child and having the complete freedom to play what we wanted.

And back then boys did grow their hair too and we’re not considered girls or even considered that they were effeminate.

It is remarkable isn’t it. How the stereotyping is always there in these histories of male people who believe they are female?

Sounds more like hatched needed significant mental health support to overcome bullying and medical exploration to discover their PAIS. I do hope you received years of that mental health support before you took puberty blockers hatched, or at least since.

But nothing in hatched’s words was convincing ‘being a female’. But they did at least answer.

Clearly all the men now insisting on entering womens competitions did not find sports to be an ongoing hell.

a constellation of statistically linked elements that together describe something almost intangible and linguistically elusive, but which your brain is able to derive a coherent pattern and meaning from over time?

Isn't it odd that this constellation never includes all the things that women spend half their lives doing and statistically so much more than men (as evidenced in many studies). Like childcare, cleaning, the mental load, elder care.

Those things that if adult human females don't do they get vilified for e.g. not putting the kids first (see the transwidows threads for how very rarely the transwomen give a tiny shit about the impact on their kids - if biological women behaved like that they'd be called bad mothers)

It's almost like a man's view of a woman has very little resemblance to reality for biological women.

ButterflyHatched I think your long post was one of the saddest and most messed up things I've ever read on the subject. It certainly helps to explain the tragedy of trans.

It's messed up because none of what you describe makes you a women. It's all feelings and gender stereotypes. Stereotypes that I thought me were gradually doing away with.

For example, my husband (he's the one man in the world that I have a good understanding of after nearly 40 years together) would empathise with a lot if what you describe.

He is on the short side for a man.
Hated team sports.
Had two sisters.
An emotional absent father.
Always got on better with women because you can have better conversations with them, according to him.
Was bullied at school.
Is emotionally intelligent.
Not aggressive.
Enjoys art and painting.

I could go on, but you get the gist. Literally none of that makes him a women. He's a normal heterosexual man, successful at work and in his private life. I assuming there was other stuff going on in your life that made you feel that you were "in the wrong body". An extreme reaction to the stresses in your life. Genuinely I feel sorry for you.

In addition, our youngest daughter always had boys as her closest friends from nursery to uni. She is very much a women and now lives with her male partner.

This whole trans ideology is so skewed that I despair at where we are now.

It really must make some people confused and angry at life to know that the only way to be a girl or a woman is to have the body of a female. That our behaviours and experiences are probably only different from male experiences because of that body. And all its biological processes and differences.

And as we have all been repeating, everything else is personality.

And don’t forget, that a male’s gender identity of a woman is simply their very own personal and unique perception of what a ‘woman’ is. They will never and have never actually experience life ‘as a woman’. Only ever as a male with their identity.

And when you read how they have constructed that identity and the supporting historical events etc, it is always based on sexist stereotyping.

Because there is nothing else. There never was.