Positive aspects of trans?

[eatfigs]

Now that one of the most powerful men on the planet has put his weight behind ending the influence of gender identity ideological beliefs on American government policy, I think it's fair to assume this is the beginning of the end for trans activism, not just in the US but globally.

Maybe a eulogy is premature but it got me thinking about some of the arguably more positive aspects of trans that will be on the way out too.

Such as, I like their underlying message of non-conformity with sex roles. Why shouldn't we all wear what we please, regardless of our sex? There's nothing wrong with a man wearing a dress or a woman wearing trousers and a shirt.

I also like how much of the original intent, back when trans was considered a manifestation of gender dysphoria, was to be accommodating to individuals with a medical condition that caused them significant distress. Like we make accommodations for many other vulnerable or marginalised groups.

Finally I appreciate how trans gives many people a sense of community in a world that in hostile to individuals who don't conform to society's expectations. Trans activism in particular gives them a purpose.

I still fundamentally disagree with their beliefs, and everything positive I mentioned above is sullied with all the harmful nonsense they layered on top of it. But I just wanted to give a thoughtful nod to the underdog on its way down.

@eatfigs

you seem to have a very euro centric view of ‘sexed’ garments.

does this count as a dress? If not, why not?

Do these count as trousers and shirt ( they are worn for agricultural labour) ?

This doesn't change the point.

Women identifying as male can still be forcing an agenda of misogyny and censorship on everyone, by taking an approach of going 'I don't like female stereotypes, therefore I'm going to follow male stereotypes'. This includes trying to punch down on otherwomen.

You seem to be under the misguided idea that only men enforce misogny. This is definitely not true.

Yes when a woman identifies as a trans man, she's basically saying "I'm not girly enough to be a proper woman/don't ft the stereotype/meet with men's approval" or sometimes more sadly, rejecting her sexed body because of sexual harassment or abuse. I'm not happy about either of these. We all have a sexed body and cannot change that, and it would be a far healthier message to learn to accept both what we are (our sexes) and who we are (our personalities and how we want to express ourselves, within legal boundaries and balanced against others' rights).

You can't change your sex. No "gender reassignment" surgery or hormones in the history of the world has ever either changed anyone's sex, or given them even a remotely functional or healthy facsimile of the opposite sex's genitals. And in attempting to, it's caused many other harms, for example to the urinary system, cardiovascular and immune system - and that's even without the horror of realising you weren't trans all along.

What is "true to yourself" about all this when you are not and can never be the opposite sex? There is no "true" opposite-sexed "you".

Thank you for the comment. However, in part it depends on precisely which point @viques was trying to make, be it explicitly or implicitly. But if one is going to have a reasonable debate on an issue, surely it is important to get the facts correct rather them being lost in the noise of dogma and emotion.

Your assertion about my own beliefs are way off the mark and definitely out of order and I am certainly not "misguided" as you put it, particularly as I have not even mentioned my views on misogyny but neither did @viques mention misandry which should also be a consideration, especially given the stats from the census.
Have a nice day.

We obviously didn't invent misogyny, but unfortunately it's true that women enforce misogyny.

Women, sadly, reinforce stereotypes to their children; women say 'boys will be boys' and make the girls do more housework; women carry out FGM; women stand by their rapist husbands; women criticise other women who are not feminine enough/wear the 'wrong' shoes/are the 'wrong' weight; women say that other women were asking for it; women try to protect themselves from misogyny by being 'one of the lads', sometimes to the extent of becoming transmen...

Many women don't do any of the above, but unfortunately many women do - while still being vulnerable to misogyny themselves - and that's the conundrum: why are so many women enablers for misogyny?

Thanks for starting the thread @eatfigs. I'm not sure where I sit any more on this. In some ways I'm exactly where I was in about 2016 when I nearly had a breakdown a few weeks into being handed a transgender caseload and finding that I was literally expected to teach male people how to present as feminine, with the added benefit of being in a small consulting room with a range of six foot men between me and the door. I'm not very feminine, and had led a happy life because of all my exceptionally forceful foremothers who had worked for many years to point out that unfeminine girls and women are no less female and no less worthwhile than any other women. All of a sudden, for almost the first time in my life, I felt inadequate because I wasn't girly enough. Someone wanted not to be "mistaken" for a man on the phone and needed me to help - as it happens, I'm mistaken for a man on the phone all the time. So fucking what? In what way was changing something about a healthy person the job of the NHS? And yet somehow, the very eccentric and rather side-eyed clinic at Charing Cross had got mainstreamed into the NHS and its remit had been transformed into part of the key funding agreement nationally. Cue, of course, a snowballing train of referrals.

I also met a remarkable amount of women who LOVED this work, they told me how much they enjoyed it and wished they could do it again. I have no idea how they saw it. I just wished it was them doing it and not me. I lasted 6 months and begged to leave.

Given all that... there are to me some interesting threads in all this that could be followed, if it wasn't all so crazy and if reality could be acknowledged. The exploration of gay culture and its use of opposite sex roles at times is really fascinating to me. I don't particularly like drag as a performance, or panto, and there are straightforward feminist analyses of all these things, but I find it interesting nonetheless. And the violent punishment of so many traits considered 'not male' in boys and men is horrible. The current trans movement hasn't to me helped that at all, but maybe boys of this generation feel differently? The burly chap who put my bag on the discharge this morning was wearing long earrings and a beard. I possibly wouldn't have seen that exact combo a few years back, even in the 90s (stud earrings yes, danglies no.)

And the huge feminist crevasse that was evident from the start of the second wave, between valuing women for being 'as good as men' and valuing things considered feminine/women's work? I didn't really engage with that one at all in my life, despite having many examples that could have led me that way. I reject entirely that transwomen blaze a trail for women, but seeing male people really value and celebrate female culture could lead us somewhere more positive?

Discharge=coach. I'm travelling on a bus, not a river of fluid.

It is not unreasonable to state the truth that you can't change sex and women can be misogynists.

What is striking is how challenging untruths is always framed in this debate as 'unreasonableness'.

The truth is not unreasonable. It just is. And we just can observe this, without any ideological bias.

The unreasonableness is when we are supposed to accept harms 'at any cost' without thought as to alternative courses of action and holding others to account for their unreasonable sexism, homophobia and various other prejudices and pointing out the use of propaganda techniques and emotional blackmail to try and coerce others into upholding this fantasy.

The 'true authentic self' point encapsulates the problem in framing a lie as a truth that can not be questioned.

But ultimately it always comes back to this point that no matter what you identify as and how much surgery and which pronouns, you use you can't change sex. Sex is not gender and gender can not replace sex. Sex remains important because we are still discriminated against on the basis of it due to the impact of biological function (and expectations). Sex remains important in terms of our development and our ongoing health.

We can deny the truth, but the truth always catches up with us one way or another. This isn't about bigotry, this is about reality.

That we have to spell this out (and be abused for doing so) is deeply concerning.

So many people are being harmed by people who profess to being kind. Upholding lies and then accusing others of unreasonableness is not kind.

With regards to true authentic self, how does that work for family members who have had the experience of growing up with a sibling / parenting a child who now claims they are a different sex?

In every conversation that comes up, its technically demanded of me by activists to declare I have a sister not a brother. But if I say that, I'm lying and not being my true authentic self because thats not my life experience. And this matters because the question about siblings is about establishing and sharing common bonds and life experiences when communicating with others. My identity was as a girl with a brother. My history hasn't somehow changed, so why should my identity be forced to change?

I'm not going to lie to prop this stuff up. I'm not going to play second fiddle to my brother whose identity and sense of self apparently is more important than my own. Thats not equality.

This is an issue thats constantly overlooked. The impact on others. We should not just accept it, if it harms us.

I will take your word for it, however, let’s face it, it is a minority of that minority , who are forcing the agenda of misogyny and censorship, and that minority is it seems clear, largely men.

Murderers are being true to themselves. So are paedophile, and rapists, and fraudsters, and thieves. Stalkers too. And gamblers. Oh, and drug users and suppliers. Alcoholics as well.

None of those people leave a trail of destruction and broken lives behind them, do they?

Thanks for the message @viques. Please don't take my word for it, it was info from the census. I'm not sure what evidence there is to support the "largely men" comes from other than the media. Certainly that seems to be the case in elite sport where there is significant detrimental impact on our sportswomen. It's an area I have been involved with for a long time and I've been a keen supporter of Sharon Davies. My guess (and it's only a guess) is that the impact on men is less overtly destructive and hence there is less talk about it but in my experience, the anti-trans lobby is every bit as strong within the male community as it is the female community.

Anti-trans is NOT the same as Pro-Women's Rights.

Stop it with the smearing. Its misognistic.

Women are capable of having their own set of values and objections completely independently of men.

Yes there is this bizarre set of truisms that have grown up around gender ideology and social justice movements more generally, where things like "inclusivity", "being kind", "being true to yourself" (and of course "bringing your whole self to work") are seen as automatically good in a blind, unthinking way, on an extremely shallow surface level without thinking it through.

No, you don't have to always be inclusive to everyone just because. Lots of organisations, institutions, situations have exclusive categories, for reasons of safety and fairness. You don't have to include a creepy 50yo man in a teen girls' sports team because he says so. That's ridiculous. We do not, actually, think everyone's "true self" and sexual interests are automatically wonderful and fabulous. You only have to think about it for 5 seconds to realise you do actually (or most people do, I would hope), exclude pedophiles and rapists and wife-beaters and many more such types from the idea that everyone's "true self" is great and should be on display at all times. You do not have to "be kind" to someone who unfairly muscles in and takes your long-trained-for sports victory and medal, or wants to ogle you/for you to look at his dick in the changing rooms. Why the hell should you and who decided that's OK?

You might be interested in reading this before quoting the results from that census to prove a point. The results from Newham, an area where many people do not speak English as a first language, and Brighton which has a large and active LGBTQ population are interesting.

Thank you for your response. It seems to me we are, broadly, in violent agreement. My point on "reasonable debate" was as a consequence of inaccurate information. If we are to keep a sensible debate/discussion going then, it seems to me, we need to be mindful of using inaccurate info just to make our point when, in fact, we are being disengenuous. That's when the whole discipline of debate falls down and becomes "shouty", dogmatic and unpleasant in my view.

Agreed.
Being gender critical is being true to myself. I don't believe it's possible to change sex.

But until such time as the ONS comes back with it's report, they are the only figures available - unless you know differently if course!

Not a statistician, can’t even spell it, but looks as though the ONS has already all but put their hands up and agreed that the 2021 census gender data is very flawed.

Sorry, seem to have lost the link

If the ONS changes it's figures then I stand correct. But in the absence of anything else, is it any less flawed than just a statement from someone posting on MN? I wonder 🤔. Have a good afternoon I'm off to the gym.

On 5 September 2024, Emma Rourke, Deputy National Statistician, wrote to Ed Humpherson, Head of the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), to request that the gender identity estimates from Census 2021 are no longer accredited official statistics and are classified as official statistics in development. The change in designation was confirmed by OSR on 12 September 2024. To reflect this change in designation, the accredited official statistics logo has been removed from this bulletin.

This is the statement on the ONS website before accessing the figures.

Edit; oops ive just repeated what others have posted. Sorry

But it does state quite clearly that the numbers are being questioned.

Re the ON figures.

They showed up the other incompetence of Stonewall. When they came out there were loud cheers and exclamations of surprise about all the trans people in one of the most deprived areas of London with a particularly high level of non-english speakers. And how wonderful it was.

Stop and think about this for a second.

If it had been accurate, it'd have been on Stonewall's radar rather than coming as such a shock. Why? Well they are supposed to deal with the public. And if they were missing such a significant number of people there needed to be questions about why Stonewall had been failing to get engagement from people in the borough in question. But no one in Stonewall had the braincells to work this out.

That's the same Stonewall that came up with a huge figure of trans youth suicidal intention and didnt stop to question why this group was also self reporting something like a 50% disability rate which should have set off huge alarm bells as to what is really going on and whether it really was trans status that was the underlying cause. Correlation is not causation and all that. (This cockup is mentioned somewhere on the depths of MN if not still on Stonewall's site - unfortunately the fallout from the claim lives on in just about every thread on the subject)

The moral of the story is when you get data, you shouldn't take it at face value; you should always look for flaws in methodology which might be giving misleading information. As a rule, if and when it does occur, it can often be hard to spot. These two examples, however, are just about as glaringly obviously problematic as it gets.

And it demonstrates the real depths of stupidity that made it to the top of Stonewall. This is basic level stuff.

That's the same Stonewall that has spent years 'educating' the public. It really makes you stop and ask 'did they ever really have a clue or think about any of this?' I think the lesbians that they abandoned really have some choice words about it.

But even those who push the claim that this man has magically turned into a woman treat him as a Schrodinger’s woman. Never to be dismissed or disdained like they would a real woman. Only a grown man who is claiming to be a woman would invited to Biden’s Whitehouse to be celebrated for his appropriation of the moniker and strange infantilisation of ‘girlhood’. No real woman would be getting that. Only a man gets to transgress the boundaries of women and girls when he wants. The women and girls conveniently trampled on with ne’er a whisper of anyone considering their rights to object.

Sorry, too late to edit, but that was in response to a post by @eatfigs .

“the trans activists believe a load of nonsense about Dylan Mulvaney being a woman because he says he's a woman”