For those who believe in Gender Identity over sex: why do you still need to believe in Men and Women at all?

[FlirtsWithRhinos]

One thing I do not get about Genderism is that they reject the belief that it's the physical body that makes a human a man or a woman, yet still believe some humans are men and some humans are women.

But if we hadn't had the example of two physical sexes, why would we have come up with the idea of Man-people and Woman-people in the first place?

I find it very weird that they can't or won't tell us what definition they use for Man, Woman etc ("it's a gotcha" , "blah blah blah" etc) yet demand such very specific provisions for Men and Women. How can they be so certain "trans women must use women's spaces/compete in women's sports" when without a definition of woman it's impossible to even explain why women need women only spaces or women only sports?

It's all a contradiction. If whether someone is a man or a woman is not based on their biological sex then that means that some men have female bodies, i.e. breasts and a vagina, and some women have male bodies, i.e. flat chest and a penis. It also means that hormones levels cannot be ascribed to men or to women because again, you might have men whose bodies are flooded with oestrogen and women whose bodies have an abundance of testosterone. So why all the cross-sex hormones and surgery?

Very good question.

As is the question - asked numerous times on this board but never answered - why do gender identity people think that altering genitals is so very important?

I'd like to know too. I'd also like to know how Eddie Izzard flips between 'girl mode' and 'boy mode' yet children can't do this and therefore need medication and surgery?

Excellent question — and one I have been pondering for a while. I had a conversation with a group of friends a few weeks ago (multi-generational; all very thoughtful and well educated; all very woke) and I tried to ask variations of this question — ie if it isn’t possible to define “woman” than how is it possible to define and defend “women’s rights”? To my astonishment, they all seem to think “woman” means anyone who “feels like a woman” and the fact that the number of men who “feel like a woman” is “vanishingly small” should mean that no one should care if a few men get counted as women and benefit from “women’s rights”.
I was not able to explain convincingly my view that “women’s rights” are meaningless if there is no definition of “woman”. How is it possible for someone to believe men can “feel like women” without agreeing what a woman is (and much less what it “feels like” to be one…)

I would love to see some posters who support gender identity and prioritise gender identity over sex answer this. Thanks flirts.

Gosh it's very quiet in here.

Come out come out wherever you are....

Yep.

If defining men and women by their body parts is 'reducing people to genitals', as is so often claimed, why does it matter what genitals someone has, and therefore why do they need surgery?

I think the question is unanswerable because it conflates everything trans. (Rather like the infamous umbrella.)

It seems to me that there are, broadly, three types of being trans:

Trans as escape from,
Trans as escape into,
And trans as a 'philosophy', a deliberate queering of the world.

For both one and two, you need the binary. For the third, nothing matters because you'll challenge it, deny it, change it anyway.

This sums it up for me.

This is a good summary of the issues.

But all types of trans activism do need the existence of the sex binary which they have forcefully reinterpreted as the existence of 1950s style sex stereotypes binary. Without it there's nothing to transition from or to and nothing to queer.

As an aside, I find it odd that the queering only seems to attack women and the female sex. I would have thought that the queering of 'man' would be much more central if the process is supposed to attack hierarchies.

In reality, of course, sex-based mistreatment merrily continues even if we pretend sex no longer does.

@JellySaurus

Smart answer :)

I agree there are many reasons individual people come to a trans gender identity but recognition of this is being obscured by the deliberate conflation by activists into the Trans Umbrella.

The versions that acknowledge the sex binary accept that sex differences pre-exist any subjectuve "gender identity" and therefore allow for the possibility of sex-specific needs and supports that are not extended to others of the opposite sex due to a gender identity.

The philosophical/ideological position that gender identity pre-exists and is indpendent of sex does not allow for this possibility.

It's no coincidence that this particular understanding of gender identity, the one which does not allow for single-sex provisions, is the one that is being promoted aggressively by lobbyists and activists.

I deliberately framed my question to those who reject the belief that being a man or a woman is anything to do with sex - those who subscribe to the ideology/philosophy of a pre-existing gender identity that supercedes body sex - exactly because it is this specific version of "trans rights" that is in the ascendant and is being used to landgrab women's single sex supports despite having no coherent ideological basis for such things to exist.

Yes, as you point out, it's logically incoherent. However that is not stopping it being leveraged to cause real damage in the real world, and for that reason it needs to be robustly challenged to justify in its own terms the demands it makes.

I just saw this on Twitter, 'If you had XY chromosomes but a CBX2 variant that caused your body to develop along stereotypically female lines, and then discovered as an adult that you had XY chromosomes, do you think you should have to transition to life as a man?'
I think this sums up some of their positioning- it's all about living life as ....(a man, women, non binary etc.). I think most argue that sex differences are inconsequential to being a man / women and gender expression is the determining factor.

I can accept th

I fully accept that some people believe their gender identity is more important to them than their sex. In turn, I expect them to also accept for some people, gender identity is non existent or inconsequential and both positions need to be catered for.

How do you "live as a man"

Please ?

You get listened to in meetings and by workers fixing your gutters?

But that's how others see you not how you live your life ?

And to achieve that I would need life endangering surgery and probably hormones also which seems rather unfair - why should I physically change myself before someone else will listen to me ?

I fix my own gutters btw

I think that's a great example of how they have it 100% backwards. They start from the assumption that - oh, let's say women's clothing, or women's toilets, or women's professional networks - just happened to exist, floating out there empty in the world waiting for someone to use them, and it's now up to humans to decide out what criteria we want to use to decide who gets to access them.

The reality is that these things all exist because of a specific need, so the right way round is to ask "what need is this for?" and that tells you who gets to access it.

I believe that women (sex) 's specific needs are based on the intersection of three things:

1. The ways in which the capbilities of their bodies are different to men
2. The expectations society places on them because of their bodies
3. How growing up and living life subject to 1 and 2 affects the way they understand themselves

So looking it the question based on a lens of purpose and need rather than abstract qualification, our putative XY CBX2 person who has both understood herself as and been treated as female from birth, and whose body does not have male capabilities, qualifies because her needs and challenges are those of the female sex even if she, technically, is not. A "passing" transwoman might have (1) and some degree of (2) but not (3) - different challanges, different needs.

@nepeta "As an aside, I find it odd that the queering only seems to attack women and the female sex. I would have thought that the queering of 'man' would be much more central if the process is supposed to attack hierarchies."

Interesting point. If what you say is true it would make more sense to queer the patriarchy, rather than the hard fought for concessions to it's primary victims.

I know. My comment was partly a joke, but also a reference to the fact that we "live as women or men" in a social context where our lives are partly affected by how others view our sex. In Afghanistan living as a woman now means pretty much being held as prisoners inside the home, for instance.

Oh, they think they are. That's the really ironic thing. They have decided the sex binary is a patriarchal constrcution so taking away women's name, rights and voice is actually sticking it to the Man.

Just total coincidence they've chosen for themselves an "enemy" they can actually attack and beat with little effort or risk to themselves as opposed to actual, you know, patriarchal power structures.

Just another example of women's bodies and lives being used as the playing tokens in men's culture wars.

That is a useful skill to have. I like doing carpentry projects, but won't climb tall ladders.

I mentioned gutters, because that thing actually happened, the suddenly becoming inaudible and invisible or at best being seen as an irritating mosquito to be swatted away.

You won't get an answer OP because this is where their lies and refusal/inability to understand biology falls apart.

At best, you might get a long winded waffly non-answer, usually ending in 'educate yourself' which I've always found laughable.

Hell I'm still trying to figure out how 1 person can be a they/them.

I tried posting this before. Not sure what went wrong.