Stonewall has expelled crossdressers from the trans umbrella - Sex Matters

[IwantToRetire]

Stonewall’s long-standing definition of “trans” changed on 27th June 2024 to drop “crossdresser” from the list. Before then, it said:

“Trans people may describe themselves using one or more of a wide variety of terms, including (but not limited to) transgender, transsexual, gender-queer (GQ), gender-fluid, non-binary, gender-variant, crossdresser, genderless, agender, nongender, third gender, bi-gender, trans man, trans woman, trans masculine, trans feminine and neutrois.”

The so-called “trans community” is not a homogenous group but a list of identity options, some of which, like “neutrois”, no one can define. Crossdressers are familiar to many of us, though, and in the past would not have been described as trans. It always seemed odd that Stonewall’s definition included them. It has worked well for crossdressers, though, normalising their behaviour and giving them protection. Calling a man a part-time crossdresser could see you branded transphobic and even cost you your job – even if the man in question did not claim to be a woman.

Article continues at https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/stonewall-redefines-trans-to-exclude-crossdressers/

Clothes have a gender insofar as they are tailored to a specific body form. A woman's dress off the rack won't fit a male body.
A few weeks ago I was watching a docu about reuse and recycling. Three men were building a smoking box from an old metal cupboard. The electrician of the three (an artist in his main job) was wearing a skirt and top in black, which were clearly tailored to his male form. Black leggings, male sandals, male short-hair cut, clean shaven. He looked like a man, who was wearing a well tailored skirt. A bit like a medieval male dress. No indication that he identified as trans.

It's not about the clothes. It's about imagining themselves as women sexually. The clothes are a means to an end.

As people are still getting to define themselves, these men can just claim to feel like a women with their lovely womanly fishnets and erections and they are still included.

I suspect my definition of a cross dresser is not the same as the way these men see themselves, this purely stops us claiming that Stonewall supports them. It still does support them as they can just call themselves whatever they like.

Well quite.

They’ve just cottoned onto the fact that when women like me are chatting to our ‘be kind, TWAW’ friends who still, bless them, think it’s all about poor transsexuals, and explain cross dressers are under the Stonewall trans definition, that it lands badly with our ‘be kind’ friends who exclaim ‘ but they aren’t trans!’ and then start to ask questions.

This is marketing.

Too much of a coincidence for it not to be linked to Labour coming into power.

They are probably labelled the same as those males who flip flop according to the side of the bed they get out of in the morning and, if that is the case, AGPs are now to be called gender-fluid, in which case, according to the gospel of stonewall 🙄they still fall under the trans banner.

It is just a tidying up exercise.

I wonder if it might be the opposite, actually. I know that obviously no-one thinks the tories will win, but for the sake of argument, if they did and the EA 2010 is updated to reflect that sex = biological sex, it would make sense to remove cross-dressers from the list.

One argument I've heard in recent times from psychology students is that they are being taught in uni that "biology" can include psychology and that therefore, a transwoman can technically be "biologically" female if their psychology is characteristically female (I suspect this comes from queer theory and deconstructing everything).

Another argument I've heard for transwomen being defined as biologically female is that hormones are biological and so if someone has an endocrine profile that matches a female, then they could technically be classed as biologically female (I know that doesn't work scientifically, but it's an argument some transactivists fervently stand by).

I think I've also heard IW and/or similar activists refer to themself as biologically female (or as 'cis' women) along the same lines too.

Cross-dressing is the only term on the Stonewall list that doesn't relate to some sort of inner or psychological conception of gender, so I wonder if that has been removed to make it easier for transactivists to claim that actually, transwomen are biologically female (as they have simply redefined the word "biology" to mean something else). If "biology" is redefined in common usage to class transwomen as "biologically female", then any amendment to the EA 2010 would need to go back to the drawing board to reflect the new linguistic usage of "biology".

The more language shifts, the harder it is for the law to keep pace with how words in legislation should be interpreted in everyday situations (such as deciding access to single-sex spaces in practical terms).

Also, regardless of whether Stonewall is worried about the unlikely event occurrence of a Tory win, it makes sense that distinctions in accordance with biology would be pushed for by any GC activists, groups or parties.

So since the focus of the GC movement is so squarely on "biology" (which has become more prevalent in recent months with the end of the "no debate" era), it makes perfect sense that this would be the next word to be redefined by Stonewall. And removing "cross-dressers" from their list makes this much more achievable.

By the time I got to the point of surgery - always the end of the process and after several years of other therapy first back then - something had shifted. As you were asked to sign a waiver before they consented to do the surgery that you understood that it was not changing sex but reassigning gender.

I was told by the psychiatrist about to pass me onto the surgeon that this was a legal requirement because the law would not recognise any change of sex and he was sure never would as he had just gone to court to give evidence to help annul a transsexual's marriage to a man as illegal on those grounds.

So gender was introduced into the nomenclature not for any reason other than to give a separation from sex.

This is really interesting as a way of showing how attitudes, policies have changed.

At that time, was the point of the process about identifying someone as having genuine dysphoria, and if accepted, then surgery was offered?

Because the big change in terms of the law and medical practice seems to be (put crudely) those who experience actual physical discomfort, as opposed to those who choose or would prefer to have a different physical body.