'What is a transwoman'

[ArabellaScott]

It seems huge chunks of the electorate have no idea what the word 'transwoman' or phrase 'transgender woman' actually mean.

https://murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2023/08/07/clarity-matters-how-placating-lobbyists-obscures-public-understanding-of-sex-and-gender/

'The results of our polling show that to avoid confusion and misunderstanding, journalists and others need to spell out clearly what sex of person is being referred to, in any context where sex matters.'

Thanks. I've been trying to remember all afternoon!

Depending on environment I say men pretending to be women. I have referred to that on here before and my posts have been removed. Lets see how long this one lasts. It is a fact and is ok to say that. Living as a woman makes no sense, how do women live? In a big pink fluffy house?

Personally I've always liked Julia Long's term - "men who demand that we call them women."

I'm on Twitter myself, and it's just like on here. Our side uses Transfrau and the TRAs use the space. And I've seen a gazillion inane sermons on SM about how it's an adjective.

Bonus points for gender star vs "Binnen-I" for plural nouns. A certain section of German GC Twitter has even started to ironically use "gender-neutral" language such as "aktivisty", "ens", etc.

It's in Christine Burns's book Pressing Matters.

‘Our successes as a campaign were grounded in progress made for people who fitted the clinical definition of transsexual. At the heart of this was a tacit understanding that people in positions of power might be persuaded to change laws for people with some kind of clinically underwritten status – something they couldn’t help being. This is why ‘Transsexualism – The Medical Viewpoint’ was seen as strategically important and why all the key court cases had rehearsed the developing scientific understanding of a basis for us being born or developing this way. It was also why the government would expect to include a medical definition of ‘transsexual’ in the forthcoming employment protections they planned to consult upon.

‘We knew in our hearts at that time that policymakers and judges weren’t yet sophisticated enough in their understanding to contemplate rights for people whose difference appeared self-identified or impermanent or maybe even optional. That didn’t mean we weren’t going to try where possible. There was a valid freedom of expression case to be made for people to be able to present in whatever way they wish. But we were also pragmatists, careful not to frighten the horses at this early stage. (Note, however, that in the Equality Act 2010 – which replaced the Sex Discrimination Act – the requirement for having been medically diagnosed was finally removed).

There's a longer quote from the book here:

https://womenspeakscotland.com/2021/06/23/the-trans-umbrella-is-older-than-you-think/

If it's the Sussex police a transwoman would be described as female.

https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/22739331.sussex-police-row-trans-woman-paedophile/

We knew in our hearts at that time that policymakers and judges weren’t yet sophisticated enough in their understanding to contemplate rights for people whose difference appeared self-identified or impermanent or maybe even optional. That didn’t mean we weren’t going to try where possible.

Duped.

You'd think if the policymakers read that, it would be game over, wouldn't you?

I like your style.

He's throwing down the gauntlet to Keir Starmer who thinks 0.01% of women have a penis - aka men. I for one welcome it as the more people really grasp the facts the better.

It's a shame that these bleeding hearts had zero capacity to see anyone else but them as actually human or equal, or having any kind of right other than a slave class.

No one gives a shit who wants to identify as what. No one minds at all. It can be life long, it can be a few months, it can be real or not real, whatever, you do you and have a lovely time. The limit is that other people have needs too, and their rights, lives and freedoms are the boundaries to your absolute freedoms to express yourselves.

All this pouting and whining and special pleading is all about one thing: a demand to matter more than women and to have women and women's rights and other people's right to reality and their own perceptions ffs!!! sacrificed to them. Regardless of agenda and regardless of impact on women. It's male supremacism with a healthy dose of sociopathy in the lack of seeing anyone else as equal. Fuck off with that.

This is completely unsurprising.

A 'woman' is an adult human female. So by the normal rules of the English language, a 'transgender woman' means a woman with the attribute of being transgender, so a FTM.

Using the word 'woman' for someone who isn't any kind of woman is always going to cause confusion. 'Transwoman', a new noun, would have been a kind compromise, but that ship has now sailed.

It's deliberate. Intentional queering of language.

This is exactly why, if the Labour Party doesn't disavow the nonsense, they risk losing a lot of votes in the next election.

Because the Tories will make bloody sure all those people who don't really care and aren't really paying attention DO realise what this means. Because (although most of it happened while the Tories were in government for thirteen years) they would much rather be talking about rapists in prisons than about the cost of living, the state of the NHS, or the benefits of Brexit.

I think @MargotBamborough has summed up the general public's confusion perfectly:

"Yes, trans women are women, because that's how they identify. Oh, well, not when it comes to sports, obviously, they shouldn't be allowed to compete against female athletes, that's not fair.

Prisons? Surely they wouldn't put male rapists in women's prisons, anyway, trans women can't even commit rape if they don't have a penis, can they? Oh, they do have penises? Well how are they women then? No, of course a rapist with a penis shouldn't be in a women's prison, that's insane.

I don't see the issue with rape crisis groups to be honest, can't there be separate groups for women and for trans people? They don't want that? OK but what the women want matters too.

Toilets and changing rooms though, I think that's OK as long as they don't still have a penis. What's that? How do we tell whether they have a penis or not before they walk in? Hmm. I hadn't really thought about that.

So are there any situations in which they should be treated as women? Not really, no. Just pronouns, I suppose. It's polite to use people's preferred pronouns, isn't it? Unless they're a rapist, of course. I'm not calling a rapist "she", don't be absurd."

Both the law and the ever changing vocabulary is deliberately confusing. Im sure its all designed to make normal people avoid the discussion.

Kay burley interviewed a minister this morning as said that what sunak said was illegal because of the EqA.

The minister replied that gender is not the same as sex and sex never changes.

Im not saying a reporter should be an expert on every topic discussed, but sky news has a duty to state facts, so sky is obviously confused.

The minister is confused too, because if sex is not the same as gender, and sex cannot change, why is the state giving adult men, born male, female birth certificates when they get a diagnosis of gender dysphoria?

If sky and government ministers are confused by the laws and trans terminology, most people will be.

Or maybe Kay Burley and Sky News just wanted to highlight the issue and the current problem with gender vs sex.

Forever gender was used interchangeably with sex and everyone understood that. Now gender (feelings based) has come to mean something entirely different from sex (binary - only men have a Y chromosome) and the more people wake up to this the better IMO.

I have Never conflated sex and gender.

That may be because I'm a) a 2nd wave feminist and b) have never done "gender conforming" things just because "that's for girls"

I too have never done gender conforming things because 'that's for girls' and brought all our children up to wear any colour and play with any toy.

However, for as long as I can remember forms etc generally ask for gender when they mean sex. That is what I mean - ie previously to most people in common parlance gender = sex.

Yes, many people use the terms interchangeably. I think often people are a bit squeamish about saying 'sex'. It is slightly annoying that 'biological sex' is the same word as 'the sex act'. We need more words.

forms ask for Gender, often times, because the British are unbearably and inexplicably coy about even the word "sex"

and i don't think it's all forms, otherwise the stand-up circuit would have lost one of the most stupid jokes in history where they all say something like "the form had a blank box next to 'sex' so i wrote 'yes please'"

The Gender Recognition Act equates "gender" and "sex", practically if not explicitly. It allows the holder of a GRC to have a new birth certificate with the"acquired" description in the column headed "sex'.

it is a "legal fiction" and, frankly? it is wrong

I've read a good description of legal fictions - "Legal fictions are falsehoods that the law knowingly relies on."

They are lies, and everyone in the legal system knows they are lies, but are nevertheless obliged to act as though they were true.

Some people outside the legal system don't realise or won't accept that they are lies. (cough) IW (cough)