Is it too early for a post mortem?

[Appalonia]

So, now that America has categorically rejected transgender ideology, which I do think will affect the rest of the world, is now the time to ascertain HOW did so many institutions, including the Democratic and Labour Parties get so completely bamboozled by this ideology? Which is crazy, not based in material reality, disadvantages half of the population, has physically damaged thousands of young people, and that they didn't think that people would see through it?

I know a lot of people dislike Matt Walsh, but his documentary, What is a Woman, was jaw dropping! We must NEVER let this dangerous idiocy happen again ( and yes I know it's not over...)

I think that missing part has been suggested numerous times previously.

“I acted in a particular way by digging up clay and making mid pies, watching cricket on the green, whittling with the Swiss army knife I got aged 9 and making nd mending things with my male cousins and my brother.”

Sounds like me. But also being the batsman for my brother’s super fast bowling which he learned from my father who was a very fast bowler. And I trailed around and learned by watching how to fix fences, weld, build, paint buildings, throw a calf and ring bullock’s bollocks, and all sorts of things. But I didn’t choose a career path that was female or male but one that I wanted that was both. Guess the ‘training’ concept is as shit as the ‘born in Dudley’ attempt.

Oh! I am still a woman, of course.

@ButterflyHatched

You have defined "women" as something other than female-bodied.

We are speaking of the challenges and experiences of people who are female bodied, and the rights, supports and protections they need.

Why are your experiences and needs, and indeed thoughts about "womanhood" in the meaning that you use, in any way relevant to the needs of a group of people who share the characteristic you have explicitly rejected as relevant to womanhood?

You can't have it both ways.

Either being of the female sex is not the fundamental definition of woman- and girl-hood, in which case the needs of the female sex and the political voice and demands for rights we may make to mitigate them and the inequality and victimisation we face because of our bodies are nothing to do with your needs as a "woman", or being of the female sex is the fundamental definition of being a woman or girl, in which case the needs of the female sex and the political voice and demands we may make to mitigate them are nothing to do with your needs because you are not a woman.

Either way, this is not your lane. The legal and social protections and moral rights of female people were not defined with reference to your needs or with the intention to accomodate you, and you have no moral right to them.

Women, in the original sex-based meaning, spend our lives dealing with the emotional wheedling, boundary-pushing and inappropriate "logic" of male people who want us to acceed to their desires against our own self interest, who see us as ATMs to pay out on demand not complete humans in our own right.

Woman know that guy from far too early in our lives not to recognise the style.

You appear to think you are good person. Please do not use the manipulative tactics of abusers. Please don't be that guy.

You Helleofabore, AlisonDonut, me and millions, nay billions, of women throughout history have clearly not had the correct training we therefore must not be women women as per the special women handbook.

Essence gail! It is about the ‘essence’. That word gets posted over and over in the posts that attempt to support a male person’s declaration that they are a girl/woman.

It often is used as some kind of derisory throw away remark. That we all reduce being women to some kind of ‘essence’.

Reality is really shit. Nature is cruel. And despite many male people’s attempt to redefine being female to suit their own self-centred demands, reality and nature abides on undisturbed.

By Butter's logic, a baby girl washed up on an uninhabited island and growing to adulthood without contact with other humans wouldn't be recognised as a woman by the first sailors to find her, because she'd not had the requisite womanhood training.

Like all genderist thought, there is an insight about gender here - that the specific experience womanhood within a culture is socially constructed, but like all genderist thought it's a simplistic and superficial take which takes the result of a complex process as the whole thing.

As a girl grows to womanhood she experiences:

The physical experience of being female
The way people with bodies like hers are portrayed in her culture
The way people with bodies like hers are treated in her culture
The way she is treated in relation to her own behaviour
The attributes, behaviour and experiences that her culture values or rejects for people with bodies like hers
Her own self image, ambitions and preferences in the context of all the above
The social factos and drivers she experiences changing in response to how she herself changes

And all this through similar sets of lenses for her race, her class, her wealth, her family relationships, her place of upbringing and living, her physical and mental health, her intelligence, her physical prowess, her attractiveness and many others.

It's an incredibly complex process that is feeding back into itself and mutating through her entire life.

There is no "woman training". There is the interaction of many many different external factors on a female person and her own internal responses to that,.again and again and again.

Butters believes Butters has experienced "woman training" because Butters has observed the social expectations on women and perhaps even the unfair treatment we face. I'm sure Butters feels the way men treat an effeminate male, insulting him by pretending to think he is "a girl", is the same thing women experience.

Butters is forgetting that the woman in the middle is an active part of the process, and that to experience this from birth, knowing this is about your body, the female one you were born with, and knowing people will see that body about you always and it will always carry those social constructions, and that they are also part of you and something you won't ever truly escape, is an entirely different thing to seeing it happen from.the outside and imaging it happened to you. Not least because the process creates the you. You can't think "this is what I'd have been like if I experienced that" because (aside from it being far too complex to predict in that way) the personality thinking that would not have existed had they experienced it.

A male person is never going to experience society's treatment of and constructions of womanhood in the same way as a woman because so much of it is rooted in constructions about the female body and the experience of existing in that body in that social context.

The sheer arrogance of a male telling women what they are, how they are to be defined, what womanhood is, how they became a part of that and the fact they are so blase bout showcasing how misogynistic, sexist, patriarchal and downright offensive they are never ceases to amaze me.

Indeed.

I remember the classic self absorbed very male celebration while recounting the constellation theory that apparently sex categorisation has lost its hard boundaries. That apparently the two sexes have fuzzy edges and are unclear.

It was just another reminder that this group of people who insist that society comply and create policy based on their philosophical belief will leverage any other group they can to manipulate others to get their way.

And remember, this poster is someone who also celebrates being considered an ‘elder’ and advises children and young people.

“A male person is never going to experience society's treatment of and constructions of womanhood in the same way as a woman because so much of it is rooted in constructions about the female body and the experience of existing in that body in that social context.”

Yep. And don’t those male people hate being reminded that what they demand is truth is very much false and there is fuck all they can do about it.

The truth is always that a male person who declares they are female will only and always experience life as a male person. No matter how they forcibly change the meanings of words, reality bites. In fact, they can change language completely, but reality will still be that they are people with a body type that fits a particular sex category.

Which is also what it always cycles around to the manipulative and hyperbolic ‘you don’t want me to exist’ type post.

Because that is all that this group have left.

The truth is always that a male person who declares they are female will only and always experience life as a male person. No matter how they forcibly change the meanings of words, reality bites. In fact, they can change language completely, but reality will still be that they are people with a body type that fits a particular sex category.

Which is also what it always cycles around to the manipulative and hyperbolic ‘you don’t want me to exist’ type post.

Yup. To quote Blade:

“Some motherfucker's always trying to ice skate uphill.”

What a fantastic post!

It's always disappointing when a fascinating thread like this gets derailed by the demands of an individual determined to focus all attention on themselves. However, their self absorption does generate some outstanding posts from articulate & insightful women repeatedly describing all the complexities of women's lives.

That's not what I said.

Butterfly, this is exactly what you said at 04.15 this morning

“You were trained to act in a particular way by the social environment you grew into an adult under. You saw how other women behaved and incorporated those behaviours into your own to a greater or lesser extent. As did I. As has every other woman who has ever lived.”

I’ll just leave that there, and other readers can decide for themselves

No, that's not what I said.

Which part of what I said here is untrue?

Every human mind is a product of an initial starting state and ongoing internal and external influences.

Identical twins diverge and grow up to be different people even if they remain similar in some ways.

Maybe you need to be clearer about what you actually mean Butterfly? Maybe it would help to start with some definitions - can you define what you mean by the word ‘woman’?

The part that’s untrue is that I was just influenced by women. You say women are trained to act/behave in a particular way, because they are women. This suggests that women may not behave in ways which you consider to be ‘male’, but actually women are not required to curtail their behaviours in this way.

I accept that some behaviours are inherently more risky for women, because of their female biology (excessive drinking for instance). Of course none of those things would be a problem for you - you presumably face other issues, which, as a woman, I do not.

Men should also not be required to conform to sexist stereotypes. I find it extremely sad that you have not found a way to express yourself as you wish while acknowledging the biological reality that you are a man.

Edited to add that I think it would be a much kinder society that accepted you as you are rather than telling you you’ll be happier trying to live a lie.

I don't think this is the thread for a definition war over the word 'woman'. Whatever I say will be hammered to fit the easiest straw man which will then be argued against for the next two pages accompanied by demands for me to explain the inner minutae of my childhood and psychology when I try and contest my unwilling assignment to an ideological standpoint I never held.

We've done this many times over the last few years and I'm really not interested in providing more training to the anti-trans debate club.

If you would like to replicate the experience I suggest we all shout at a wall for a few hours and then you can quote potted youtube essays about anti-trans talking points at me.

I think it's clear that 'anti-woke' populism is going to be the noose around the neck of American politics for some time to come; we've probably lost at least a decade to the Trumpist reaction, and I'm pretty sure that the tantrum will only accelerate its ongoing counterpart in the UK as well.

I would be interested in seeing whether posters believe it is even possible to oppose Farage at the next election; Starmer is clearly toast and neither the Greens or Libdems seem likely to prove credible.

I'm firmly into damage control territory now - it's clear that there is no hope of advancing trans rights for another generation and my focus is increasingly shifting toward saving what can be saved of what we have while preventing a decline into putin-friendly total hard-right oligarchic oblivion.

What can we do to save women's and gay rights from the "own the blue hair brigade" anti-trans trojan horse now it has gained so much evangelist influence?

Regarding protecting women's rights and gay rights, you could start by acknowledging the reality of sex and staying out of women's spaces.

Every little helps!

Butterfly, I mean this kindly, but nobody cares about the inner minutiae of your childhood and psychology, because none of it is relevant to what a woman is.

If we can explain, easily and simply, what a woman is, and you can't, perhaps you might want to consider the possibility that we are right?

As for "advancing trans rights", what left is there for you to trample all over?

The best thing you could do for women's rights and gay rights is to acknowledge that women and gay people exist, and that these categories should not be redefined to include you.

Of course Butterfly, if you’re the one telling kids they’d be happier living a lie, you really need to take a long, hard look at yourself (and the Cass report)

Even if this were true, Butterfly was socialised as a male, and it comes through strongly in every single post.

preventing a decline into putin-friendly total hard-right oligarchic oblivion.

Good lord.

Identical twins diverge and grow up to be different people even if they remain similar in some ways.

So gender is just an aspect of personality then. Which is what I’ve always maintained. Doesn’t influence a person’s sex though.

I don't think this is the thread for a definition war over the word 'woman'

It’s also not a thread about you. Or your upbringing. Or the variable narrative of your history. Or another thread giving you the grounding in reality you should have been given over 20 years ago. But here we are. So if you’re going to come along and disrupt a thread about American politics with your own sob story, you don’t get to re-route the thread away from questions directed at you.

So, define woman, Butters.