If you can identify as anything…?

[Newnamepls]

I’ve name changed for this but have been here a while (although lurking more than posting).

I’ve been doing a little thought experiment the last few days. If, according to gender identity ideology, you can identify as anything - could I, a woman, identify as a trans woman? If not, then why not? If I can’t identify as a trans woman because I was born female, then doesn’t that prove that sex does matter and does make a difference? It would mean you have to be a man to be a trans woman. But if a trans woman is a woman, and a trans man is a man, then surely even if I can’t directly identify as a trans woman, I could identify as a trans man (and therefore BE a man) and then back into a trans woman? Although since everyone is what they say they are, it seems to me I should be able to declare myself a trans woman if I want.

I wonder how trans women would feel about the appropriation of their words and their identities.

Yep, my kids are Be Kind, they can an accept that a man is a woman but I’m being facetious when I say I’m a trans women. Go figure

It's called circumgender.

I was going to identity as a transwoman when I found a clinic that does nhs funded facial hair removal for them. Apparently as a mere woman with pcos in don't qualify for the funding.

It has been done and the community was quite vocal about how offensive it was.

Almost like binary thinking is at the centre of their ideological thinking after all. But yes, OP, you are right to question this almighty gap in their logic.

@MillicentTrilbyHiggins that is utterly ridiculous, how infuriating.

@Menopausehaver ugh so frustrating, I’d love to know the reasoning/ logic. Why are some people to be taken at face value and some people being facetious? And how come we’re allowed to use the apparently irrelevant sex of someone to decide?

@StuntNun thanks, I’ve looked that up. Lots of references to ‘legitimate’ and ‘genuine’ trans people. But I thought references to who is legitimate or not is transphobic!

@Helleofabore perhaps I need to do some digging to see the reasoning on why that’s offensive but everyone else gets to be what they say they are!

You've missed the basic thing though that you can't identify as anything and require unconditional enablement and indulgence from others. It's not a 'for everyone' right.

This is about society being split into the servants and the served, who are split very largely on a binary sex basis. You will be told who you will enable and what you must enact, heaven help you if you don't, and those demanding this labour from you under duress will laugh in your face if you try to explain your identity/feelings/intersectionality and tell you - at best - that they don't care. It is by the law of averages though more likely to be phrased in a lot of obscenity, sexual violence and ideation that the average crisis team would be concerned about.

Try for example explaining your identity and sense of self as a biological adult human female, or a homosexual female. Or look up terfisaslur.com and see what happened to women who tried it.

This is the main reason really why it's a mistake to take it seriously and enable it by engaging with it in the first place. How does Chump Lady put it? Something like 'when someone tries to hand you their shit, you do not have to take it'.

I believe that it is considered ‘mocking’ trans people.

I think you can identify as a trans woman. Going by some definitions, I am agender, which is trans. I'm also a woman.

I'll be happy to assist my company's EDI policies as a trans woman.

Also happy to see a clear definition of trans that helps me determine whether or not I am.

I wonder if you were brought up as agender - ie not having any gender identity - but then realising when you are older that you are a woman - if that is a gender transition? Or vice versa. I've never been clear on whether the gender identity is actually meant to change from one thing to another to be a "transition" or whether you are supposed to have "always been" a girl/ boy/ non binary etc.

Oh yes Frood I have no doubt he’ll would await anyone who dared try. Hence the name change for even daring to ask the question! I haven’t looked at terf is a slur, I’ll check that out.

If trans women are women though, don’t the two become interchangeable and women actually are trans women too? Or perhaps the answer lies in biological sex after all.

IW states that they are female and a trans woman, so I think it's fine for any female to be a trans woman. Unless there is some sort of difference in who is allowed to identify as anything?

“If trans women are women though, don’t the two become interchangeable and women actually are trans women too? Or perhaps the answer lies in biological sex after all.”

And this is the logic used by female transwomen. That the ridiculous statement of transwomen are women must be symmetrical to be true. The fact that women are not trans women defies all logic. This era will go down as some shit postmodernist experiment and women and children were harmed!

" Trans women are women " doesn't mean that all women are trans, no. Like "dogs are mammals" doesn't mean "mammals are dogs".

There are tons of logical inconsistencies in the trans believers - we don't need to make up any more.

As a woman, you can identify as a trans man. Maybe you can identify as a trans woman. Or both.

But, look at that happened to Rachel Dolezal when she presented herself as black.

I can never understand why people are accepted & applauded when identifying as the opposite sex, but this woman was slated for identifying as of another race.

The nearest I can get to any clarity is Stonewall's definition of '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."

So that suggests that a person "assigned female at birth" (bollocks, but we'll roll with it for now) could not identify as a transwoman because then her gender would align with her sex, thus she could not be trans.

Yes I accept that, but aren’t we constantly told that ideas which differentiate between trans women and women are discriminatory and wrong? E.g third spaces - they differentiate between trans women and women and that’s not fair. So either there are ‘types’ of women or there aren’t, surely?

Actually ignore this, I’ve thought about it some more and this is a rubbish point from me!

Yes, they are right to say that they are claiming TW are a subset of the category "women" ("subset" not implying any inferiority, just categorisation hierarchy. So a chair is furniture, but furniture isn't only chairs.)
They claim that the category "women" consists of trans women and cis women, although are quite muddled about what those terms mean practically.

I disagree that there is, or should be, a category called "women" which includes or excludes people based on unspecified criteria to do with one's personality, appearance, level of femininity, behaviours, abilities, preferences, feelings etc.

If you tried to list such criteria it would be immediately apparent that it's a far more non-inclusive definition than merely "having a female body". That's why they won't do it. The idea that it's some set of standards you have to meet by feeling a certain way and not just a descriptor of physical reality.

And this accepts - and everything rests on - that there is such a thing as a sex matching a gender - presumably 'female' matches 'woman', although they always refuse to say. A concept they simultaneously deny.

You could, simply, believe that no sex has any matching identities, gender feelings, etc, which then removes any requirement for anything to "match" or " not match" and you can just live your life with your own personality in your own sexed body.

If you think that people should treat you differently in situations where sex shouldn't matter, because you appear to be one sex rather than the other - I would suggest that you are part of the problem.

(And where sex does matter - eg as a risk factor or medical factor - then it matters, so it helps no-one to pretend otherwise).

Stonewall doesn't actually say that female "aligns with" woman (we're supposed to assume which sexes match with which genders). But that assumption makes you transphobic, because there's nothing female about a woman.

Again, trying to assert and simultaneously deny that women are female.

Years ago, I had a debate about this with a transwoman on the Reddit gender debate page (now sadly shut down). Here was the gist of it. "Woman" is a social construct, and is an identity. Anyone can identify as a woman if they feel like that identity fits. There are no necessary/sufficient conditions for being a woman - it's up to you if you are one or not.

However, 'transwoman' is different. "Transwoman' is not an identity. It is not something which anyone can say they are. In order to be a 'transwoman' you MUST have been assigned male at birth, and undergone some form of transition. If you weren't assigned male at birth it's impossible for you to be a transwoman. So transwoman has objective conditions which must be fulfilled...it is not something you can just be if it feels right to you. Hence, transwomen can be women, but women can never be transwomen.

I did point out that there was no argument for this, and it was all rather convenient and self serving. If you say that 'transwoman' has objective criteria (being born male, etc), then that argument can easily apply to 'woman' as well - to be a woman you must be female, an adult etc. Essentially, the rules are anyone can be a woman (becasue they say so), but only people born male who transition can be transwoman (again, because they say so). Anyway, it was an interesting conversation. Transwomen really dislike the idea of their identity being a free for all and up for grabs.

"Woman" is a social construct, and is an identity. Anyone can identify as a woman if they feel like that identity fits. There are no necessary/sufficient conditions for being a woman - it's up to you if you are one or not.

So anyone in the history of the world who has been using it to mean "female" is wrong, and it has absolutely nothing to do with being female. There are no criteria, so it's a totally meaningless word that communicates nothing except "a human".

Which means everyone on the planet is a woman. All the male people are women, just as much as the female people and the TW are.

I don't think they're right about that!

Something like identifying as 'Double trans' came up on a thread many months ago with this story of scenario I think. But it hurts my head to try to work it through. I feel like I need to draw out little diagrams for each stage.

@WeeBisom Stonewall's list of terms agrees with that, I think. It defines "transgender woman" as '"a term used to describe someone who is assigned male at birth but identifies and lives as a woman. This may be shortened to trans woman, or MTF, an abbreviation for male-to-female."

The definition of 'gender' is "Often expressed in terms of masculinity and femininity, gender is largely culturally determined and is assumed from the sex assigned at birth." This is virtually meaningless and in no way explains how gender can be not the same as, or not sit comfortably with, the sex assigned at birth, in the words of the definition of trans.

'Sex' is not defined at all. I wonder why