Feeling really low after being honest

[Notfeelingitwasworthit]

Training today. Gender identity. I was dreading it. Just keep your head down, I thought, don't say anything.
Then the subject of safe spaces came up and the presenter (they/them) said well it's actually not a problem at all, there are no statistics which show that sexual offences occur on hospital wards or in domestic abuse shelters and the other women are also really cool with it so it's not a problem at all!
I just said that this wasn't really accurate, we know women don't report sexual assaults or inappropriate behaviour, especially not if they think they're going to be labelled as transphobic, and women are constantly told to put up and shut up, so that labelled with the fear of being labelled a bigot OF COURSE won't mean they answer truthfully.
Obviously I was set upon. I tried to stand my ground but people kept going. Not just to my face but with snide comments throughout the rest of the day. I would join a room, everyone would stop talking. Even my closest contacts said 'well maybe you just shouldn't say it' and 'they do have a point'.

It just feels so lonely. It feels like you have a choice between being true to what you believe and having friends. Two of my closet friends would disown me if they knew.
Do I have to lie forever?

I do think that is a pernicious and concerning area. Offenders are pre-disposed to bad behaviour and I would not be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I agree that it is suspicious behaviour in this context.

If we are to allow trans women to call themselves women (which I don’t mind but obviously everybody else on here does), then it is useful to have a word to differentiate the two.

As they aren't actually women, women and "trans women", if you must. If not there are plenty of ways you can be less gaslighty.

For me, it doesn’t seem obvious that this is the case, although I can see that a lot of people on here are convinced that it is.

They don't all have to have malicious intent, for it not to be a good idea to lie about their sex.

Yes. The observation that offenders are pre-disposed to bad behaviour would seem to acknowledge that men do self-identify as female for malicious purposes with sufficient regularity for this to be increasingly recognisable as a pattern in police & media reports for those who read carefully enough. The “wrong language” can obscure or even deny this, limiting public understanding & damaging faith in our institutions & democratic values. The wrong language can be a big, huge!, deal!

Just thinking re: my worry re. de-railing… We’ve actually gone neatly full-circle…

That absurd claim made by the trainer that women aren’t at risk in the way the stats show they actually are? Well, it sounds like s/he was ignoring the existence of any stats full-stop, so thank goodness the OP knew they were out there, right? Had the knowledge to refer to them, yes?

Those stats she drew on are the very ones these oh-so-kind-&-harmless linguistic shifts are obscuring & could destroy.

Whether you agree with her view re: single-sex spaces or not, surely she’s entitled to the information necessary to make the judgment she did. Denying it exists is bad enough, but can be countered. But manipulating it at source, as our great & good are now doing…?!?!

Fair point, language obviously makes a massive difference.

When I used “cis”, I didn’t use it to suggest that women were a subset of their gender. Another way I might have phrased it might have been “main women”, the trans women being the subset. Perhaps that is not how it is used by those who most commonly use it. However, as I said, I am still working out what I think about all this and I’m not well versed in the lingo. I’m probably not the only one either - it’s a word in general circulation and most people probably haven’t thought about it that deeply.

It does seem to be the case, though, that, for the people who care most about the subject, the word has acquired an additional patina of meaning - as an indicator of tribal allegiances. I have accidentally waded into a group where everyone shares the same view and I have thrown my own, slightly different, views around, rubbing everyone up the wrong way. But it seems the clincher that made everyone decide I was a traitor to women was my use of the word cis.

@Minglingpringle

Ah yes, motivations.

How do you respond to the growing evidence that huge numbers of the young people who want to transition are also young people with autism, depression , eating disorders, confusion and anxiety about their sexuality and other conditions -including the immature brain development of adolescents - which means that their thinking and logic processes are largely fucked up?

Do you think telling these young confused people that taking powerful, life changing, and irreversible chemical treatments, and having radical surgery on healthy body parts is a good way to help them to feel more at ease with themselves ,their sexuality and their post pubertal bodies ?

Or do you think that it might be more helpful to give them the help they need with their autism, eating disorders and depression and help them to overcome the anxiety they feel about themselves, their sexuality, their bodies, and their place in an uncertain world without offering them unhelpful solutions that do not address their primary needs and will, moreover, lead to a lifetime of taking medication with the likelihood of serious consequences like infertility ,heart issues and osteoporosis ?

And talking about motivation, what do you think was (and is) the motivation behind the medical teams at places like the Tavistock, and other clinics, who knew/know about the mental state of their young clients but chose/choose to ignore it, not offer appropriate treatment programmes and , in the case of the Tavistock ,did not think it worthwhile following up on the mental health of their clients to see if the taking of puberty blockers, doses of artificial hormones and encouraging surgery actually sorted out the autism, anxiety, depression and eating disorders their clients presented with?

It does seem to be the case, though, that, for the people who care most about the subject, the word has acquired an additional patina of meaning - as an indicator of tribal allegiances.

It hasn't acquired an "additional patina of meaning" because most people don't use it or consider its meaning in the first place. For me, it's an imposition on me of your ideology and an attempt to universalise your gender identity based worldview.

Without this belief in gender identity ideology, if a "cis woman" means a woman who isn't trans, a "trans woman" should mean an adult female person who, for whatever reason, identifies as a man.

@Minglingpringle

I don’t personally object to trans women calling themselves women, although I wouldn’t allow that to prevent me highlighting that they were a subset in situations where it would be useful to do so.

'Subsets' of people is a really difficult idea fraught with issues but if you want to make that analogy, Transwomen are a 'subset' of men.

Because the only reasons to group with women are based on sexist stereotypes.

Group trans men in as a subset of men and they loose their maternity rights.

It boils down to legal rights and structures.

Again the question is needed; why were women given single sex spaces in law in the first place?

Because you came here to lecture on how we know nothing and you are somehow enlightened.

It is disrespectful and saying that transwomen are a subset of women is offensive. It's sexist. It's ideological claptrap.

Your whole spiel about being interested and finding things fascinating is utterly disengenous. We've seen plenty come here say they are so interested and want to learn and all they do is repeat by rote the same rehearsed and contrived script and aren't remotely interested in listening or respecting.

Men and women can't change sex. Saying you can is a lie. It's a falsehood. You can have cosmetic surgery and take harmful medications and adopt gendered stereotypes but you remain the same sex and this matters because discrimination on the basis of sex doesn't magically disappear because we replace sex with gender. Indeed it only reinforces it.

You can try and force an ideology based on gendered stereotypes on others, but sex retains it's importance and people are not obliged to take up your quasi-religious beliefs.

Cis is ideological manipulation to coerce women into accepting men into their spaces by suggesting women have a privilege over transwomen. This is such utter nonsense. This is highlighted by the ideological capture of the corporate world and the public sector and numerous intimidation campaign and unlawful treatment of women who have been treated appallingly because lobby groups have successfully convinced everyone that the law says something completely different to what it actually does.

That's a terrifying amount of power.

I firmly call sealioning.

Without this belief in gender identity ideology, if a "cis woman" means a woman who isn't trans, a "trans woman" should mean an adult female person who, for whatever reason, identifies as a man.

I'm sure I've seen a survey reported somewhere that showed around a third of people did interpret the term that way.

Many of the women 'accepting transwomen in female facilities' therefore do think it means 'women who call themselves male'.

Clarity is not helped of course by the insistence from the male people concerned that they ARE women/ female/ knew they were girls since being little boys/are biological females despite the testicles, etc etc etc.

Stick around if you're sincere, Mingling. We all started somewhere.

Stick around if you're sincere, Mingling. We all started somewhere.

I'm generally inclined to take this approach.

It's worth trying to nail down what your understanding of various terms is, though.
Is a trans person someone who wants to be the opposite sex, or someone that really and literally is a man/woman/neither based on what they're like as a person? (Personality traits such as those culturally assumed to be "feminine"/"masculine"/sonething else?) If so, when you say 'woman' what are your describing that sets one apart from someone who isn't a woman?

Most people on this board tend to use women to mean female, so when we had someone come in to discuss "feeling female" it led to pages of genuine confusion as people didn't realise the poster wasnt using "female" to actually mean female.

As I'm not in school today, I feel like giving a little chemistry lesson 😆

Cis and trans are terms used in organic chemistry, to differentiate between two different forms of the same chemical.

These chemicals are called isomers, and they have the same chemical formula (the same number and type of each atom). If you just looked at their chemical formula, you might think that they are exactly the same.
For example, CHF=CHF.

However, carbon requires 4 bonds to be chemically stable, and in this example, each carbon only has access to a H, a F and another C.

So, each carbon here makes a double bond to the other carbon. It looks like an equal sign.

This is significant, because a double bond does not allow for rotation around itself.

If there was only single bond, the groups on the end could rotate, and you could change from having F and H on the top of the molecule, to having H and H, or F and F on the top.

If there is a double bond, the groups are locked in that orientation.

Simply, if two of the same groups are locked on the same side of the double bond, that isomer is "cis"

If the same groups are locked on opposite sides of the double bond, the isomer is "trans".

This can have a massive effect, for example one isomer of paracetamol is inactive in the body (but harmless), whilst the other version has it's analgesic properties.

Now, students are also taught to use the E/Z classification for isomers, as well as cis/trans (same/across)

E stands for Entgegen (German = opposite)

Z stands for Zusammen (German = together)

I'd be quite up for calling us zusammen women!

Can't think why entgegen women isn't used!?

But ultimately, cis is a chemical term. A geometric double bond is either cis or trans.

Given that there are meant to be over 100 different genders, transgender REALLY doesn't make sense.

Perhaps we should go back to using transsexual?

Although, that phrase was knowingly replaced, as talking about transsexual children starts to raise all sorts of questions.

Transsexual adults, and gender questioning children.

Visual example

Just to add to the sentiments that you were very brave and there would 100% be others in the room who agreed with you, and there would also be people who are on the fence who would have listened to you and maybe gone to do some reading of their own. Well done.

I needed that lesson - though it brought back some bad memories of exams & weird things called moles that I never got to grips with.

So, in chemistry, “cis” clarifies, refines, offers precision & certainty.

Whereas currently, in this debate, it does the opposite.

It genuinely distresses me that I used to be able to refer, for example, to “the oppression of the women of Afghanistan” safe in the knowledge that everyone knew the demographic was female, & the reason for their oppression, their sex. Now, children are systematically being taught to interpret women as “identifies as” or “presents as”, including “trans” & “cis”. The meaning & root of the oppression has been, terrifyingly, obscured. I used to be able to read a reference to a “woman” committing a crime / winning an award / setting a record etc. etc. etc. & feel the correspondent surprise at something so unusual (eg. sex crimes), or pride at “our” achievement after millennia of oppression on the basis of our sex. From being a teen, I’ve reacted like this, quite consciously.

And now it’s been taken away, & replaced with a loss of clarity - & in the demand that I understand woman differently is an implicit demand that I understand myself differently; that I align with a different demographic, define myself according to their values, celebrate their achievements as in some way representative of who I am. But it’s not who I am. I want to celebrate trans women’s progress as a different demographic, & retain my precious sense of my own.

It’s actually quite demeaning as well as distressing. And a huge loss.

@Vebrithien .

😘@Boiledbeetle

@Catiette

A mole is just a set number.

6.02 x 10^23

A very, very big number!

We use it, in much the same way we use a 'dozen', or a 'pair' to mean numbers.

However, atoms and molecules are very small, but, they all have their own masses.

For example, 1 mole of pure charcoal is the size of a £1 coin.

1 mole of copper is about the size of a digestive biscuit.

Another way of thinking about it is with sweets.

If you have been good in class, I could gave you 10g of marshmallows, there might be 10 marshmallows.

If I gave Bob 10g of gummy bears, there might only be 5 sweets.

It would be fairer to give you each 10 sweets.

So, to work out how reactions work properly, we need to know the number of atoms or molecules reacting.

The number of moles is the mass of the chemical (in grams) divided into the atomic (or formula) mass.

Its a bit like saying "how many dozen eggs do I need to make a cake with 2000g of flour?"

An example.

How many moles of magnesium are there in 48g of magnesium?

Well, if we GUESS

Given

Mass = 48g
Atomic mass of Magnesium = 24 (from the periodic table)

Unknown
Moles = ?

Equation
Moles = Mass ÷ Atomic mass

Substitute
Moles = 48 ÷ 24

Solve
Moles = 2

There are 2 moles of Magnesium in 48g

This allows us to use the correct ratios for reactions, and can be used to predict how much product we might make.

Lesson over I think

sorry for the derail

Did someone mention gummy bears?

That’s such a good explanation! I genuinely wish you’d been my chem teacher. One of the reasons this board is so great. Years of being terrified by moles (usually have to qualify that comment to avoid rodenty misinterpretation) - & now a vague sense emerging that they’re not actually that scary… Thank you.

cis and trans is also used in genetics to describe if the regulatory elements of transcription control of an operon (mostly in Prokaryotes but not exclusively so) or genes are sitting on the same or the opposite strand of DNA that is being transcribed.

And that’s where the ‘cis’ part should stay

🤯

Where’d all the friendly marshmallows go? 😩