TW who supports the SC ruling - AMA

[VanishingVision]

Hello! I was thinking of doing this post for a little while now as the previous posts doing this by the rather wonderful trans men here were really interesting but I didnt want to take up too much space here or take any attention away from much more important things here than what I have to say.

But I figured to just go for it before I have a big old break from the Internet for a while.

So like the title says, I'm a transwoman who accepts the SC ruling: ask me anything if you'd like to and I'll do my best to answer.

I don’t think that infertile women aren’t women though. I think men aren’t.

Wow. Equating people to their gametes. That's a new low.

But do carry on projecting and not really understanding what you’re talking about, it’s truly novel.

If you read the full article, they make this claim:

Like any bimodal distribution, there needs to be a quantitative x-axis.

They then argue that the reason sex is not bimodal is because there is no sensible measurement for this x-axis, They simultaneously argue that you can measure differences in sex expression based on body types and genitalia - this is how we get the claim that there is variation within each category.

So presumably those differences are measurable in order to provide us with the variation, but are not measurable because if they were then we could just use that for the x-axis of a bimodal distribution, which makes more sense when it comes to sex precisely because of the variation.

So the existence of gametes are relevant for determining biological sex, but irrelevant when you can't produce them because you are infertile because...?

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but trans people aren't the ones defining women on the basis that they are the producers of the large gametes.

Hello @VanishingVision thankyou for starting this thread.

I'm the (gender critical) mum of a transwoman who came out, started taking hormones andchanged his name and documents to female a couple of years ago, and he intends to get a GRC once he has an NHS diagnosis. My DC is in his late twenties and doesn't live with me and DH but we chat regularly, visit etc. I'm going to use son/he/him here (although in real life I always say daughter/she/her because keeping the relationship with my child is so important.) I hope that's OK.

I'm glad you're here because maybe I can ask you some of the questions I can't ask my DC.

I followed the Supreme Court case closely, watched the recordings, read the judgment and followed a lot of the discussion. I listened to laywers and judges talk about the sex discrimination protection and gender reassignment protection that my son now has, including being protected against discrimination from people who want to discriminate against him as a woman. Obviously the this is a good result for women, but I also feel that is that this a good result for my son.

My son doesn't really want to be in women's spaces, certainly not toilets or changing rooms. And one thing that I think is very likely to come out of this judgment is a much better provision of "third spaces", especially once employers and service providers realise they can't just tell transwomen to use the women's facilities. Well they never could, I am pretty sure companies have already lost legal cases for doing that, but now it's clear that really there is no get-out and they have to provide an alternative so I think they will.

But apart from this I can't really articulate why I feel it's good for my child. So one question I wanted to ask is, do you think this is a good judgment for trans people like yoursself? And how is it good for you?

When men say they “pass”. How do they know that they pass? Is it because nobody challenges them?

Similar question to the one I asked of TransSister. Why do you gender your daughter correctly in person but not on a forum behind her back? Do you believe she doesn't see that as insincere?

I think its really important you value your relationship with her, but as I said to TransSister I've seen this same story played out over and over again with trans friends of mine and the result is always the same - they stopped engaging with their parents at all because they couldn't handle being treated that way. And it's always the same with the parents we see lamenting it - they can't understand why but the answer is always this exact situation.

"So presumably those differences are measurable in order to provide us with the variation, but are not measurable"

They are measurable. They give some examples:

"The 'sex is bimodal' argument conflates sex-related traits, such as facial hair, voice pitch, height, and muscle mass, with sex category itself."

Facial hair, voice pitch, height, muscle mass: all of these are measurable.

"because if they were then we could just use that for the x-axis of a bimodal distribution"

Oh really? How would that work? Let's take height. Let's take a representative sample of biological men and women and measure their height. That's extremely straightforward. Now what do we do with the results?

• Some men are shorter than some women. Does that mean that either the men are not men, or the women are not women?
• Where do we put the cut-off limits for "men", "women", and "in-between"?

Now let's reproduce the experiment, but measuring this time their voice pitch. Oops. The results don't align with the previous experiement. Some people who were very high in maleness when it comes to height (ie: very tall), are now very low in maleness (they have a very high pitch of voice). So what do we do? Which characteristic do we favour to determine if they are male or female?

If this sounds insane, it's because it is. Sex is not bimodal; it is a binary, with plenty of variations within each category.

@VanishingVision I think you need to take command of your thread because it is wandering in to the same old arguments we have had for years.

What is the practical impact of the judgement on you personally, and how moving forward can you promote your reasonable stance?

Yes, on the basis. Which is not at all the same as what you did, which was equating a woman to her gametes.

Yeah I'm not sure what's going on, now I decided to ignore it and go eat some biscuits.

At the moment, I don't feel like anything has changed for me as I've been off of work for a few months and have mostly just been at home or going for walks.
So going forward I'm not sure yet on how its going to be affecting things.
I think, looking at this thread I still don't fully understand every aspect of why I agree with it and how it can affect each part of life so I think I'll need to think a little more about this and then I can start to promote my position a bit more somehow.

You're right, @Bannedontherun , and I apologise, @VanishingVision , for helping to make a mess of your thread. I'll be sitting on my hands now and not keep on replying to Chirpy.

Height is actually really easy to demonstrate this with:

https://ourworldindata.org/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/qLq-8BTgXU8yG0N6HnOy8g/47023f08-a9f1-4830-5cf4-b4cbc2ce9400/w=1700

So if we follow the logic of your source, this distribution is binary because we have two distributions with a lot of variation. But that is obviously absurd, when we consider "human" height rather than gendered height, we have a single distribution that is bimodal with a trough at about 171 cm (where intersex people would sit in the sex distribution). It would be nuts to suggest that what we have is a binary where only women are 164.7 and only men are 178.4, but this is precisely what they are doing.

Let's say it again, very slowly, an infertile woman is still a woman.

Opinions and experiences vary. I understand that my choices might not work out but this is an anonymous forum and - as I already said! - I use my child's preferred pronouns etc in real life. I've lost a good few brain cells and a certain amount of mental health to doing it but as a Mum I can take it.

And really I am interested in @VanishingVision 's opinion and experience.

I agree, it's the producer of the large gamete people that don't seem to.

Hey, no I understand why you will refer to her that way. Its a GC space and thats appropriate for you to do so.

I don't really have a fully formed answer right now, because there are alot of interpretations going on and whilst I do accept the ruling I also do have mixed feelings likely because of people interpreting it differently.

I would say that I think it could be good for trans people because I'm hoping we can just get to a point of clarity again and hopefully this could make it so the opportunists and predatory men might drop off and stop trying to use the trans label as a way of getting access to womens spaces. I'd like to see us also having some more specific services, like one for DV for example. It's sadly common for TW who date men to end up in secret abusive relationships with men who are ashamed of their relationship with a TW and turn violent and abusive. I the implications there are a bit more specific than one for either women or men.
I'd also be fine with 3rd spaces. I will never use a public swimming pool because I do not want to get changed in front of men or women, if we had them I might actually use these sorts of places. That'd be a benefit, I'd quite like to actually go swimming or use a gym.

I hope you are one of the lucky ones and that your daughter is willing and able to look past it, for both your sakes.

All I want to say is, thank goodness neither of my darling sons felt that they were born in the wrong body. The hatred voiced on this platform is off the scale.

Can I ask what you think about the medical definition of gender dysphoria? My understanding is that it involves both distress about your sexed body and non-conformity with sex stereotypes.
But it sounds like your dysphoria related mostly (or completely?) to your body.

You just had to make it ALL about yourself again didn't you 🙄 honestly you trans people are all the same....

Its absolutely fine don't worry about it 🤣

So fully agree but wanted to correct this because I see it a lot - being born in the wrong body is shorthand for the gender dysphoria that trans people experience so that we can explain it in ways that cis people might understand. It's impossible to explain what it feels like really, so we rely on metaphors rather than actually stating that we are in the wrong body as a matter of fact. Dysphoria sucks and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

For me it's MOSTLY related to my body and of course a little bit of it is influenced by the way I'm perceived socially, but that doesn't have much of an effect now as I'm normally referred to as 'she' by people i meet so I'm not as conscious of it.

I suppose some part of it came from the stereotypes like, I dunno i couldn't deal with male locker room type talk all the 'oh yeah mate, I'd love to give 'er one' and all that but I'm also not attracted to women and had low testosterone from the beginning. I also mostly spent time with girls when I was growing up. That might be part of it but it also might not be.

But, if we wanna get into stereotypes, for example I don't feel anymore or less of a 'woman' in a dress than jeans. I might just look nicer in a dress once in a while on the odd occasion I wear one.

I think if a boy wants to wear a dress or if a girl wants to wear trousers and cut their hair it doesn't make them the opposite sex, i think dysphoria on social stereotypes too much is actually kinda dangerous.