Stonewall change definition of transphobia - questioning gender identity ok now

[fromorbit]

Huge climb down. Looks like those pesky terf women were right all along AGAIN.

Saying that trans women are men is no longer "transphobic" according to Stonewall.

Dennis give good analysis and provides text:
1/ The gender borg have every right to be furious with @stonewalluk for sneakily ditching their belief in gender identity in their new definition of transphobia. Political transvestitism holds that men in dresses have soul-like female gender identities - Stonewall now denies this
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1885735444836388921.html

The reverse weasel move is an attempt to find a safe place to claim lost ground, but opens them up to attack from TA fanatics as well as looking more absurd to normal people. They staked everything on hating women and gay people and now want to retreat when it is unpopular.

Written like that it may result in a misinterpretation. The potential misinterpretation being: "Janine's daughter is proposing to open up single sex spaces to trans women"

What I understood was more like: "It is unjust toward Vanessa to put her in a male space, as that would be hurtful to her. But insofar she is not transitioned and how things are in practice, when sharing the space where I am, but also do not fully own, we need to figure out something that works"

But in honesty those are now my words, but good thing is, that by writing here and being able to explain my thoughts and getting feedback, we know have an honest discussion at home, so: To be continued

:-)

Thing is, all that can be true (it probably isn't but it could be), and none of it changes the fact that people with female bodies face (a) different physical capabilties, most significantly the higher physical and because of that higher social cost of reproduction and in the vulnerablity to assault by the opposite sex, but also in sports and other strength or speed based activities, and (b) social, cultural and economic disadvantages because of the long history of discrimination and sadly abuse of people with female bodies. And these things affect not just how others treat us and the life opportunities we have, but also how we understand ourselves.

And for that reason, all the fluff in the world about "male brains that run better on oestrogen" is not an argument to pretend that female bodies are less significant to the life experiences of the people who have them than some sort of imagined but never identified commobality of brain.

Having a reason for why men might feel they are "really" women is not a reason that such men are actually the same as women. Their hands touching us, their eyes on us, their bodies near us, their voices speaking over us, might be women's hands, eyes, bodies, voices in their reality but they are still men's hands, eyes, bodies and voices in ours.

Female people exist in our own right, and men's feelings of commonality do not change that.

You seem to think sex, DNA etc is somehow irrelevent, but at the same time think that "man" and "woman" are still meaningful as some sort of mental difference - can you explain that? Why do we even need groups called "men" and "woman" at all? I can see the need for it when it's based on sex because ther manifestly ae two sexes and women in particular manifestly have physical and social challenges that men do not, but why is there a need to ignore that but still split people up into men and women by mind?

Would your daughter feel the same way about a man she didn't know who identified as a women sharing female single sex spaces as she does about Vanessa? If a 6ft tall adult man who identified as a woman was in a changing room with her would she think it unjust if he was asked to leave.

And, @Janine2363 , how would your daughter ever know if any male had actually "fully transitioned" when deciding whether she would be comfortable sharing an intimate space with them?

Thanks for getting back to me!

I'm really sorry but I can't work out whether your reply is saying 'yes, I personally do think is some quality (such as found in the brain, the personality, the skills, manner, characteristics of a person) that exists only in one sex and not the other', or whether your reply is 'no, I think any quality can be found in either sex'?

I do appreciate this is because I haven't quite grasped the full context of your reply but if you could shed any light...?!

I'm really trying to figure out what the hell you mean here, but it seems like you are saying you don't think sex existed as a concept until American puritan types invented it.

Is that really your point?

With the mix mash of (hilariously incorrect) history 'facts' and wild surmise, I am beginning to suspect a cabal of gender studies students are writing some of these posts...

It would explain a lot

“it is equally possible that certain brains work better with hormones of a certain sex, thus testosteron for a trans men, and estrogen for a trans woman. I think that is plausible.”

Considering both male people taking estriodol and female people taking testosterone leads to increases in stroke, I suspect you are spreading misinformation with this opinion.

Will they ‘feel’ better? Maybe. Euphoria has been well documented to start with and some people might experience this state for a long time. Testosterone is a know euphoric for females, at least at the start until issues settle in.

So do some brains ‘work’ better? No. They are increased risk. Do they ‘feel’ better’ after the euphoria period wears off? Unless you have proof of this, please don’t repeat this.

It really seems to me that you are searching for neurological markers of any kind to grasp hold of to make some kind of argument of plausibility. Do you wonder why you are doing this ? Why you feel the need to find ‘plausible’ theories that don’t really reflect any reality at all, if all this was based on fact and established evidence? Unless gender identity theory is not based on any evidence at all and contradicts the known evidence.

I've seen the frankly hilarious, ignorant and racist (Jaysus I sound like Sturgeon) 'sex didn't exist until colonialism' trotted out by tras. Tbf I don't think that's the point being made here. I think the point being made is that the government that replaced or was grafted onto/over what was there previously has left its mark still. I don't see what that has to do with gender ideology though. Certainly some laws left from colonial times still negatively affect LGB individuals.

If a law could be tailored just for Vince/Vanessa and just him that would be one thing. But it can't. However much that might upset him and his friends. However unkind that might seem. Perhaps it might be helpful if his allies weren't constantly telling him that disagreement is hatred. Not wanting him in our toilets, changing rooms and sports is not the same as wanting him dead. I'm glad he's got the PPs kids as friends. They could support him by helping see the nuance in GC arguments. He can wear what he wants, use whatever name he chooses. He doesn't need my permission. I don't care what hormones make his brain happy. His sex is and will always be male though.

Firstly, your son doesn’t have to be overtly manipulative or angry to have some kind of control over you, the adult in the relationship. He seems to have already done a good job of conditioning you to act to keep his respect.

This includes celebrating lowered boundaries for your children. The fact you think it is something to feel good about that your daughter would come to the decision to share a space with any male person who says they are female is concerning.

The statistics show that no male at any stage of transition has a lower risk profile (from conviction stats from MoJ) of committing sex and violent crimes than any other male person in the UK. Yet you think that a male people without their penis should be accommodated in the male toilets. Based not on fact, but on feelings that you have of protecting a male person who you feel needs it.

Not only that, but male people without their penis, are still as strong as other male people.

Can you tell us exactly what is the difference between a male person who has no penis because of injury or disease and one who has voluntarily had it removed for their philosophical belief ?

@Janine2363 no human being wrote that post, there is no voice within it. I might be as thick as two short planks, but it sounds like you are saying queen Victoria invented gender differences, and not pre historic society, or ancient Egyptians, or babylonians, or romans or Tudors or vikings or any other random society pre- queen victoria. As if there weren’t sex segregated women in ye olde pre-colonial India.

I do think your daughter quite kindly and sensibly would like a third space for transgender folk, for their dignity and hers.

“Vanessa's parents are nice people, they're not pushing her, they're confronted with, in today's climate, a difficult situation. They feel being ostracized, and the stress it causes, to them to Vanessa”

Nice people can still make decisions that are ideologically driven. They also could be abusive and you wouldn’t know.

And they fear being ostracised by whom? Vince or other people? Fear of being ostracised or having a child disappointed in their parent’s decision when their parents are actually the ones who seek to see the much wider picture and the impact on society and the long term impact is not a wise decision platform.

“After talking to Vanessa's parents it was clear that the whole problem is theoretical, Vanessa's doesn't want to be seen by anyone, stress caused by dysphoria.”

It is actually irrelevant whether Vince doesn’t want to be ‘seen’ by anyone. Vince is making societal demands by claiming to be female and expecting to be addressed as if he is female. I think though, you have shown that you don’t really think through these issues without being driven by emotional response and needs for one individual. could it be described as a ‘saviour’ issue?

Either way, you seem keen to celebrate your children’s boundaries being lowered, and they are acquiescing to that lowering to accommodate someone’s philosophical belief that is not reflected by material reality and seems to rely of false science to justify.

“After talking to Vanessa's parents it was clear that the whole problem is theoretical, Vanessa's doesn't want to be seen by anyone, stress caused by dysphoria.”

Just to clarify, it doesn’t matter what the intention is, whether Vince wants to be seen by anyone etc. The fact that people in his life are already acting as if Vince’s belief about himself is real or that the expectations relating to treating Vince’s sex has changed even though language accommodations, means none of this theoretical. The journey has already started.

It is certainly not theoretical to your children, and you are willing to comply and even have taken into account your children’s reaction if you indicated that actually, there are wider issues for society that indicate that collectively there are significant issues that they, your children cannot even begin to understand. These last few posts really read as if there is a need to be seen as being kind and liberal about this issue and rhetoric is being either created or tweaked to support it. How is this a benefit in the long run for society as a whole? How is this a benefit for a child to think that their demands that fit their identity should be accommodated by society, and that society should act as if material
reality can be changed to be kind to them?

@Janine2363 Around 7 years ago a friend of mine’s teenage daughter came out as trans to her parents. She had been diagnosed as ASD as a child, and had always had gender non-conforming interests, much to her father’s delight as he’d longed for a son and was disappointed to have ended up with two daughters. At the time of the trans announcement, the daughter already had a new boy name (selected with a friend group online, whom her parents had never met), and had realised she was attracted to another girl at school.

When all of this was conveyed to me by my friend, I listened and asked how their daughter “knew” she was a boy (as she had no male friends or brothers), and not a butch lesbian. To which her mother replied, with a shudder, “Oh God, not a diesel dyke.” Which answered the question indirectly but pretty conclusively.

My friend (whom I’m no longer so close to after that stunning display of sexism and homophobia) is relieved to have a straight “son” instead of a masculine gay daughter.

The whole experience has rather coloured my view of “nice people” and their support for transitioning their gender non-conforming children. I do think they believe they mean well and are being progressive, though underneath there’s actually a deep terror of having an “unpretty girl” or “sissy boy.”

I’d agree, I’m quite concerned what happens when Vanessa’s of the world grow up and realise that they’ve been immersed in a fantasy world for some time and they are not and can never be female.

We are already seeing what happens to them.

They declare as adolescents that they are the opposite sex, and people act as if they are indeed the opposite sex. Eventually they realise they need the next stage because they are ‘not feeling it really yet’. Then the next stage. That is if no one has been up front and said ‘you really are only making extreme body modifications and this doesn’t change reality’.

There are many detransitioners who tell us their stories and they are very similar. They need to get to the next stage because they feel they almost are ‘there’, but the last stage didn’t quite provide the fix to the issue they feel they have. But then they slowly realise that despite all the well meaning people who kept them in the bubble, they really could never be the opposite sex and that reality seeped in.

All because people felt it was important to support a philosophical belief in a way that people felt made it material fact. But it really never was.

After they leave the trans bubble they see the damage. The drugs and body alterations cause secondary health issues and they realise the changes are irreversible.

Yes. It is the individual who is left at the end wondering how it was allowed to happen. I think many of us can see how it was allowed to happen. All in the name of ‘live and let live’ and theories described as progressive.

I wonder if people felt this around other theories of Michel Foucault? That children must surely know themselves the best and be able to make very significant decisions about their lives?

What I try to say is that there is a reality, and we as humans observe that reality, give it names, try to explain and so fir into a human perspective, but the perspective it being put in is very strongly shaped by religion and culture.

The problem with reality is that it does not care for our explanations, it simply is, and (through science) we are still trying to make sense of it. Also because there is much we have not made sence of, or we have not yet created the means to discern there may not be objetcive evidiece yet, but emperical, ... or we got it wrong.

For instance it took us as humans to figure out earth revolves around the sun rather than the other way around, and it was not until long ago we discovered the working of DNA

And as of today nobody knows how the brain works, how we actually have free will, how (if) we can innately know good from bad, why there are homosexual and heterosexual people

In one of the posts above, at least as how I read & interpreted it, was the 'shaping by society': The impact on society -if- we would accomodate, in the context of how in -this- society people behave towards each other, Thus in a -different- society, the impact would be different and the reason for taking a certain position would go away, be diminished, or just different.

But the transgender person would be the same, that person is not defined by society, but by reality of nature yet different societies respond different to the same realities of nature.

Now that I am writing this, a thing from math came back to me. Mathematical proofs are very precise, very strong evidence, but the math basis is not given by proofs, but by axioms. Not things we know to be true, but hold to be true and the rest is constructed from that.

In this audience my impression is that most of us start with the axiom that there is no such thing as a transgender person. While I come from the axiom, given that they're around for ages from before the culture wars, being transgender is real.

Obviously this does not say how people or society best responds, but if real, you can understand my reasoning that it is normal to respect their identity.. Cause if it is real and I would respond differently I'd negate their existence (and that would then be bigotry). If 20 years down the road we figure out it is something else, then I'd made a mistake.

In my reasoning I take it on an individual basis, becasue that is how I approach and value people: As they are, not by an assumption on a presumed community they may be part of. For instance, someone wrote that 'Vanessa insisted on rights', as an individual she didn't, but in the narrative here, she's not taken as an individual, but a a representation of a community where -others- apparently want something. Well, one cannot pin the crimes of one on another, so I don't go with that.

Then there is the question on manipulation. Don't take this wrongly, but in the way those replies are brought, at time they seem to be a bit suggestive and perhaps leaning towards manipulative, yet without the facts of being there. Now I don't take this badly, becasue you like me try to explain how you look at things and I am thankful for the conversation, but it appears my way of thinking is not the majority here, but for me that's OK, as said, those conversations are helpful in my situation

A last thing, although it does not fit with the above, but in one of the replies it was about possible brain related differences between men and women.

I work in a male dominated environment, nice colleagues, no complaints in general, but the diffeenes in how to deal with things can be soooooo frustrating at times. From my PoV, they totally miss the point of what is important and thus how to proceed and when I try to explain (credit that they listen), at times I can see that they have no idea what I am talking about.

To me it appears as if we look at the same world, but from different side, they head on, me, from the side. They see the point at the end, straightline path to get there, me, I see the perspective, all the things that break and would fall over if they'd take that path. They say: "this is it !", I say "Is that what it is ?" They say: "Take care to build a network before the moment you need hel to get further" I say: "Take care to have a network, such that others can call on me if they have a need"

Perhaps I painted here a bit black and whitish, it is not that bad (I do have nice colleagues !) but this is rather real in my world and it is seems to be neither genetics nor culture

@Janine2363

Interestng post, thank you. On my journey to the position I have today I followed some of the same lines.

Here's my take....

I agree with you that there is reality, and there is the meaning we attach to reality, and they are not necessarily the same thing. But in this there are couple of things to consider:

Firstly:

We can frame realiity and add to it, but we cannot change it.

So we can, for example, decide that there are multiple subdivisions over the sex binary and they can be "real" in that they are meaningful in society and have social structues and gendered beahviours attached to them. And indeed we see societies where exactly this happens.

But we can't undo the reality of the mamalian sex binary in humans. Even if we made every word that named it, every image that showed it, verboten and forgotten, humans would still by and large fall into one of the two sexes, would certainly bear different physical consequences based on their sex, and given the significant time and resource commitment of pregnancy, breastfeeding and infant care, likely different social consequences as well.

So while we can pf course have cultural beliefs that some male people are ersatz women, or in agender mixed sex groups, despite this no male people through culture become female in the physical sense so many aspects of "womanhood" will always be closed to them (Leading to an interesting aside about the role of male birth myths and ritual from Zeus to the Molly houses.) And going the other way, a woman who becomes an ersatz man does not take on male stength and is still vulnerable to male on female sexual assault.

So whether or not trans is "real" in a sense that it reflects a genuine natural variation of the human mind that exists regardless of culture or indeed language, no matte how we may recognise this identity socially it can never make the body of the person socially immaterial in the way that genderist activists wish us to pretend because the body is real and it does have consequences outside the self image / mind. It still does not justify unrecognising and unsupporting female people in the challenges that come with being female.

Secondly,

I am also a "Does it have to be like it is? How much of what seems inevitable now could have gone a different way? What could we change if only we could escape this perspective?" person. So I can absolutely envision a society where we sliced reality diferently - perhaps to decide that men of different height are actually two different social groups, or to map additonal subclasses on to the sex binary.

Imaginging the thing is easy. Working out how to get there from here (if indeed there is where we want to go) - that is hard.

The thing that is often missed in the "culture can change" analysis is that change takes time.

So doing what trans activists demand, throwing away the belief that sex matters and opening up all the female protections to men who say they feel female (whatever that is - I am female and I don't know!) might indeed be viable in an alternative cultural structure, but right now we need to deal with the men (and women) whose "reality" and rules of engagement were formed in this culture, with these ideas about men and women, and sadly in this culture female minds (the minds of female bodies) have been marginalised because of the body they came in, female labour has been undervalued and exploited , female bodies have been fetished and objectified by men,.

Applying the rules of that envisioned culture now, without tackling the sexism and male entitlement of this culture first, will not bring that new culture into being, it will just damage a lot of women.

(The point about "trans people have always been there" I have covered in another thread, but can't find the link so here's a quick precis: all cultures seem to come up with beliefs around talking to the dead, talking to or becoming animals, and becoming the opposite sex. My take is is it not that these things are "real" but that sex, death and animals have been with humanity all through our existence, are literal life and death to us, are everyday with us and yet are ultimately uncrossable divides. And this means they are go-to metaphors both in our religions and in our subconscious minds. Universal yes, but not meaning they reflect an actual reality outside the metaphor. Very interested in your thoughts on that?)

Can't see it (literally) and I'm not going to go onto a site chocoblock with far right to read something by the pisshead sadist who told trans people that they should all get AIDS (if he knew the first thing, he would know that's a really really sick thing to say to a group of people who were affected by it). He's an incredibly evil person.

Anyway, I don't know why GCs are so obsessed with Stonewall, like, they barely acknowledged we exist until a decade ago (they were a LGB charity) and don't really listen much to trans people..hell, I personally wrote to them dozens of times to correct something they had on their site which was factually wrong and they only corrected it recently, years later. GCs seem to have this weird idea that they're some kind of 'leader of the trans' or something, whilst trans people think they're a bit clueless and not that much to do with us.

My the recycled arguments are coming thick and fast nowadays! I remember that 'what if some possible undefined point in the future that we discover that lady brain really is a thing!' argument from about four years ago.

Then as now, the answer would be 'well, it's like if in some point in the future we find out that pigs can in fact fly and we need to put in some rules for making sure that we don't have porcine deposits descending on us from above, we can deal with it then but at the moment, given it's not actually a thing....'

You don't know much really do you?

Whether trans people felt Sonewall was working for them or not, it is a fact Stonewall's Equality Index and Top 100 Workplaces list moved increasingly away from LGB factors to trans factors and this has sadly been hugely influential in misleading employers about what is required or reasonable with respect to the balance between supporting and respecting trans people and supporting and respecting other employees, up to and including encouraging employers to implement policies that the SC have now confirmed do not comply with the Equalities Act.

There is a direct line between the malfeasance of Stonewall and the climate of fear that many UK women live under at work when it comes to trans issues.

Women genuinely do feel that they cannot speak up about their distress at being relegated from a person with rights, protections and a voice to a hand wavy instance of a gender identity because they may lose their job. Whether you agree with them or not, that surely is not something you think is acceptable?

Just for anyone who hasn't seen it, in 2015 Stonewall were making recommendations in a submission to Women & Equalities Select Committee Inquiry on Transgender Equality, calling for the removal of single sex services and spaces -

https://womansplaceuk.org/2018/06/25/references-to-removal-of-single-sex-exemptions/