Definitions

[MusselTryHarder]

Hello lovely mumsnetters. I am doing a training course and have been asked to provide some definitions for the terms transgender, transgender woman and man, and cisgender. They need to be evidence based. Are there any sources that provide such definitions from a gender critical perspective? I'm keen to not use Stonewall's AFAB/AMAB definitions, nor using phrases such as living as a man/woman etc, but my search into GC resources has not provided fruitful. I still want to acknowledge that some people believe in gender identity and that is real to them (however much I personally disagree with the ramifications) in the same vein as some people believe in other religions. My definitions so far are likely to be too provocative, but if I can quote a respected source it might have a better chance of getting through.

(And if no such GC definitions exist, might it be worth creating them??)

I think that agrees with what I’m thinking. I wrote about this in more detail on the other thread about gender identity, so see that thread, but my sense is that it’s the same for many transgender people, because I think people become conscious that they have the thought that they are male, when they have a body that they know people call female, and then they try to work out why they have thought, rather than the other way around. I think there are many transgender people who don’t know why they have the thought. I think some believe it’s because of a male gender essence, and some don’t have that belief; they just don’t know why they have the thought.

But how does that mean it's not a belief?

I think it can be a belief, but it’s only a belief for some people. Because, I think you can believe that you have the thought you are male, and a body that you know people call female, without believing you have the thought because of a male gender essence. You would just know you had the thought.

@PriOn1 this is hilarious. I had to do some digging because it is written in such an embarrassing way.

”In youth culture ‘cis’ has come to suggest conventional /conforming while ‘trans’ represents unconventional /subversive /edgy.”

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 yeah sure, that’s what all young people think. Clearly written by a man in his 60s. Dead lord.

Turns out the people you linked to are an openly transphobic company (not a charity, to be clear) which docks into a hyper conservative and misogynistic Brazilian evangelical mega church. I did wonder why so many of their materials were available in Portuguese, and it all makes sense now.

Thanks for pointing me to this. It’s really helped me cement my view that a lot of the anti trans people on MN are completely bloody credulous.

Not answering your question on definitions but this explains a little about GI and GC beliefs.

https://didlaw.com/gender-identity-v-gender-critical-beliefs-the-great-divide

I think that's still a belief. It's not a fact so it's a belief.

@Tukmgru
Turns out the people you linked to are an openly transphobic company (not a charity, to be clear) which docks into a hyper conservative and misogynistic Brazilian evangelical mega church. I did wonder why so many of their materials were available in Portuguese, and it all makes sense now.

Which link is that? I can't see any links in any of @PriOn1's posts.

That's everyone.

There isn't a single person on the planet who fully conforms to the gender norms of their sex. Never has been, never will be.

It's simply not possible. Partly because they're constantly changing. Partly because there are always a few that contradict each other. And partly because conforming to the full set, consistently, all the time is simply not compatible with being a fully-functioning human.

Now I'm pondering on what identities mean generally. How do they work?

I'd say an identity is an aspect of yourself or an association that is important to you. It's more than just being able to say 'I am '. They're not always clear cut, but there's some degree of falsifiability. To identify with an aspect of yourself, you have to actually have that aspect in the first place. But to be an identity it also has to be important to you in some way.

I have brown hair, but I don't /identify as/ brown-haired. It's not important. For someone else, being a blonde might be something they really identify with and is important to them. But if someone with black hair says they identify as a blonde they're joking/lying/confused.

For another example if you live in Scotland you might identify as Scottish, or British, or European. For some people one of those identities is very important - others they may reject completely. If you live in the USA and identify as Scottish, someone might ask you if you have family roots Scotland. And if you don't have any Scottish connection they could reasonably say he says he's Scottish but he's not.

Identifying-as doesn't make you the thing. It just tells us that the thing is something that matters to you.

@thirdfiddle Yes at some point the verb "to identify" became suffixed with "as" and reinterpreted to mean "feels like" or has an "inner sense of being" but is that an identity in the same way that a role or job title could be an identity?

To take Transgender Trend's definition of a transwoman (a male who identifies as a woman) if you replace "identifies as" with "feels like" or "has an inner sense of being" then it reads much more differently, almost making the subjectiveness of the belief much more obvious. If my job title was cashier for instance, contrast "I identify as a cashier" versus "I feel like a cashier", or "I have an inner sense of being a cashier". None of these phrases actually inform you whether I am a cashier or not, but with "identifies as" it isn't as clear, in a sense. Possibly because the phrasing is newer? I can't quite put my finger on it.

Personally, I think "identifies as" is a rather generous turn of phrase, probably originally designed to obfuscate the dualistic nature of the statement, but there we go.

I think it helps to try the phrase with different aspects of identity like that.

If someone said to me 'I'm Deaf', or 'Being Deaf is an important part of my identity', I would assume they had severe hearing impairment (and possibly had BSL as their first or main language). If they said 'I identify as Deaf' I would be uncertain whether they had actual hearing impairment or were just pretending.

If someone said 'I'm a lab technician' I would assume that is indeed their job. If they said 'I identify as a lab technician' I'd think they were not one - and also that they were decidedly odd.

I wonder though if our equating 'identify as' with 'am not'/'am pretending to be' is a reaction to recent years of imposed gender identity theory rather than a longer standing association.

Okay, in general people's identities were not declared by saying 'I identify as'; they still had them. You might identify as a goth, or a Gooner, or German. You wouldn't say 'I identify as a goth' you'd say 'I am a goth' but it was understood you were talking about an identity group. Or more likely you wouldn't say it at all because you'd demonstrate it via the uniform.

Even identities with groups that really are pure social constructs are falsifiable by reference to the definition of the group in question. If you say you're a goth but you're never seen in black, people could reasonably say 'no you're not'.

Being a woman isn't a social construct, there's a physical reality behind it. And claiming that as an identity when you don't fit the physical definition is offensive. Just like saying you're disabled when you're not is offensive. If we allowed it it would detract from the rights of the group as a whole. If male people can be women, there's no need for women's sports - some women are just as strong as the men. If women can have male bodies, there's no way to have separate women's spaces in any useful way or point in doing so. If male people can be female in terms of the EA it's hard to prevent discrimination - if you're passed over in favour of a transwoman because you're a woman in your 20s and your boss thinks you might get pregnant, the company can say look we're employing a female person, this can't be sex discrimination.

Transwomen don’t have a sense they are female because they cannot possibly know what that feels like. They never have been and will never be female. If they have a sense that they are female, that sense has no basis in reality and is more accurately described as a delusion. At best, they have a factually incorrect sense that they are some fabricated version of what they imagine being female to be.

Anyone who has ever ejaculated or menstruated knows their sex and this knowledge is entirely different to some mystical sense.

Sorry, no help to the OP, but that particular “definition” gave me the rage (as I lie here cramping from having my fibroids sliced out of me this morning).

I am not saying people who have never ejaculated or menstruated aren’t male or female, of course, only that there’s no doubt at all if you have done either of those things. None of this bullshit “how do you even know you’re a woman if you haven’t had your chromosomes tested?”