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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Am I naive in thinking that in a couple of years, if not sooner, this will all be behind us? A few court cases, people clear about the law, women's rights protected again??

1000 replies

loveyouradvice · 26/05/2025 23:04

And yes the noisy TRA far fewer in number and sidelined as the sad fringe that are left as others move on.....

Or do others think it will pan out differently??

OP posts:
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17
WithSilverBells · 28/05/2025 17:49

akkakk · 28/05/2025 17:17

The issue in this is that there is no debate - it would be more interesting intellectually if there were...

The reality is so stark / so binary / so immutable / so set in stone that there is no argument that can pull it apart - in a world where words and imaginary logic is so strong in so many places, the core black and white nature of the truths in this discussion is really unusual.

In fact - so clear and fundamental and basic is the underlying reality of born man - remain man / born woman - remain woman that it is the equivalent of debates on whether 1 + 1 = 2 or whether grass is green or whether a mile is longer than a yard etc.

One side of the discussion has no argument to put forward - all they have had in the past (which has been very powerful in its time) is a cloud of fluff and mis-direction, clever use of language, emotionally charged rhetoric and bullying to get buy-in for something clearly not possible.

As that cloud has now lifted, with a huge thanks to FWS and the Supreme Court Judgment, the shining clarity of reality is out in the daylight for all to see. All that is necessary now to refute arguments is to just keep on repeating the truth:

  • born a man / woman
  • you can't change sex
  • single-sex spaces are reserved for those of that birth sex
and that is it - no argument will hold up against those truths, and everything can be brought back to a discussion based on those truths:
  • should men be able to call themselves women?
  • should we force people to use any pronouns they wish
  • can people use spaces reserved for the opposite sex by pretending to be that sex
  • can someone change sex
  • does mutilating the body change sex
  • does taking hormones change sex
  • can someone be born in the wrong body
  • What loos should people use
  • etc. etc. etc.
All of those if asked in the context of the now clarified reality in the three points above - leads to obvious and clear answers

So, it is worth putting the time in to continue to refute the spurious arguments that keep appearing, but the battle and war is already won - there will be lots of minor battles to come - but all now have phenomenally solid ammunition in the clarity that has been established.

It is time to start re-framing the discussions to more pertinent needs:

  • how do we deal with mental health issues (not just these, but the explosion we have seen in recent years)
  • how do we care for our children rather than abuse them
  • how do we establish better scientific procedures to avoid repeats of Mermaids / Tavistock / Stonewall
  • how does the charity commission need to think around what is and isn't acceptable in a charity
  • how do we as a society help those who have been so badly affected by the lies / the medicalisation / the mutilation that has taken place
  • how do we rebuild women in society so that we have a strong and healthy balance between women and men - both seen as different but equal
  • how do we help to heal those who have been collateral damage (often women)
  • how do we bring to account those who have been instrumental and knowing in pursuing coercion / abuse / control in this field for so long - esp. those whose actions have ended up with abused children / abuse of the vulnerable

All of this will take a long time - but we have the bedrock and framework to do it now - it just needs hundreds / thousands of decent people (as per here) to stand up, be counted and keep pushing forwards...

Great post👏

WithSilverBells · 28/05/2025 17:51

Hell, even trans people today aren't magically immune to transphobic attitudes!

Another irony meter explodes🙄

NoBinturongsHereMate · 28/05/2025 17:51

I'm pretty sure he genuinely believes his version of reality

All sorts of people do. Kings made of glass, and victims of penis-stealing witches are deeply sincere about their version of reality. Doesn't make it true.

ButterflyHatched · 28/05/2025 17:52

Datun · 28/05/2025 17:30

I do have a question, though butters. Why have you suddenly gone from warp speed to hyper drive? Have you been asked to use the gents at work? Is that what that fantasy was about?

Nah, thankfully my workplace is awesome unlike the scenario I posted earlier.

I know a lot of people who have, though - and in one case told they can't use either - and it's humiliating and dehumanising.

We all woke up to a torrent of utter bullshit weeks ago and it just went on and on until recently where the tide seems to finally be turning. Every day the papers were full of even more virulent transphobic guff than they had been for years, and it's like someone pushed the 'on' button on every snarling toilet-policing bigot in the country.

Your actions do not exist in a vacuum. You might not personally be a raging transphobe, but by contributing to a climate that emboldens transphobia, you have done all of us immense harm.

Yes, even the ones who have convinced themselves that dehumanisation and trans-segregation is good, actually.

You are clearly very intelligent, so I refuse to accept that you don't believe your actions have consequences. You know full well how the far right has taken ostensibly feminist talking points and turned them into a culture war. You cannot escape it every time you turn on the news or read a paper.

Datun · 28/05/2025 17:53

Datun · 28/05/2025 17:30

I do have a question, though butters. Why have you suddenly gone from warp speed to hyper drive? Have you been asked to use the gents at work? Is that what that fantasy was about?

Also butters, did you see this question?

oh, sorry, I've just seen you've addressed it

AYoungTransWoman · 28/05/2025 17:53

ButterflyHatched · 28/05/2025 17:39

Pretend what?

Why would I pretend anything? What would I be pretending?

I'm just me. I stopped pretending to be a boy once I realised I didn't have to anymore. I got incredibly lucky!

You seem to think being myself is some kind of performance - that we're asking you for a Womanhood Provisional License? I don't know about you @AYoungTransWoman but I sacked all that nonsense off decades ago.

You seem to want to think I try and affect some kind of stereotypical 'womanliness' caricature?

Bizarre. I think you should meet more normal trans people rather than treating online Weirdness Factories as representative

Literally this. Idc what stereotypes I exhibit im still a woman. 90% of the time I'm wearing whatevers practical and comfy aha

RedToothBrush · 28/05/2025 17:56

WithSilverBells · 28/05/2025 17:51

Hell, even trans people today aren't magically immune to transphobic attitudes!

Another irony meter explodes🙄

Well there was the court case where a transwoman was taken to court for...

...being transphobic so it's not a new thing.

Datun · 28/05/2025 17:57

ButterflyHatched · 28/05/2025 17:52

Nah, thankfully my workplace is awesome unlike the scenario I posted earlier.

I know a lot of people who have, though - and in one case told they can't use either - and it's humiliating and dehumanising.

We all woke up to a torrent of utter bullshit weeks ago and it just went on and on until recently where the tide seems to finally be turning. Every day the papers were full of even more virulent transphobic guff than they had been for years, and it's like someone pushed the 'on' button on every snarling toilet-policing bigot in the country.

Your actions do not exist in a vacuum. You might not personally be a raging transphobe, but by contributing to a climate that emboldens transphobia, you have done all of us immense harm.

Yes, even the ones who have convinced themselves that dehumanisation and trans-segregation is good, actually.

You are clearly very intelligent, so I refuse to accept that you don't believe your actions have consequences. You know full well how the far right has taken ostensibly feminist talking points and turned them into a culture war. You cannot escape it every time you turn on the news or read a paper.

Crikey, I bloody hope my actions have consequences!

from what I can tell, they absolutely have. I'm delighted.

And okay, so that entire fantasy was just that, your fantasy. Partly, I suspect, to wallow in, but mainly in order to make women do what you want.

Little tip. If you're going to construct a fantasy, don't make yourself the hero, no one likes that. And make it plausible. Not a fever dream that no one buys

Greyskybluesky · 28/05/2025 17:58

@ButterflyHatched You think you are a woman and thus entitled to use the women's loos.

But there isn't a woman in the world who would take a photo of herself in the women's loos and comment that she is "infiltrating" it.

Women do not "infiltrate" the women's toilets, because they are OUR toilets.

It is not the clothes, the looks. It's the behaviour. It is always the behaviour in the end.

Datun · 28/05/2025 17:59

AYoungTransWoman · 28/05/2025 17:53

Literally this. Idc what stereotypes I exhibit im still a woman. 90% of the time I'm wearing whatevers practical and comfy aha

So if it's not stereotypes, and it's not clothes, and it's not the way you think, what on earth is it??

NoWordForFluffy · 28/05/2025 17:59

NoBinturongsHereMate · 28/05/2025 09:42

I have a chainsaw on a long pole. It's not as useful as I thought, because a lot of things I need to cut at that height are branches that are too thick for loppers, but they are also too thin and wobbly for a chainsaw - especially when they're too high to grab an end to help stabilise them.

Fuck me that sounds dangerous!

(I defend claims involving personal injury, some involving chainsaws. My work head is very much on!)

Helleofabore · 28/05/2025 17:59

AYoungTransWoman · 28/05/2025 17:53

Literally this. Idc what stereotypes I exhibit im still a woman. 90% of the time I'm wearing whatevers practical and comfy aha

Nah... you may be living the life that you conceptualise as being that of a woman. However, you are living your male perception of how a woman lives. You are living a male person's life interacting with the world with your male body.

It is actually misogynistic to declare that a male person can live as a woman. Because it is not possible.

WithSilverBells · 28/05/2025 18:00

RedToothBrush · 28/05/2025 17:56

Well there was the court case where a transwoman was taken to court for...

...being transphobic so it's not a new thing.

The ideology will eat its adherents now. We can see it already on MN and Twix. I'd get the popcorn, but I can't stand the stuff

FrippEnos · 28/05/2025 18:01

AYoungTransWoman · 28/05/2025 17:53

Literally this. Idc what stereotypes I exhibit im still a woman. 90% of the time I'm wearing whatevers practical and comfy aha

Why couldn't you do this as a man instead of a transwoman?

FlirtsWithRhinos · 28/05/2025 18:03

ButterflyHatched · 28/05/2025 17:39

Pretend what?

Why would I pretend anything? What would I be pretending?

I'm just me. I stopped pretending to be a boy once I realised I didn't have to anymore. I got incredibly lucky!

You seem to think being myself is some kind of performance - that we're asking you for a Womanhood Provisional License? I don't know about you @AYoungTransWoman but I sacked all that nonsense off decades ago.

You seem to want to think I try and affect some kind of stereotypical 'womanliness' caricature?

Bizarre. I think you should meet more normal trans people rather than treating online Weirdness Factories as representative

This whole post is very very weird.

We think woman is no more and no less than the group name for the roughly 50% of human who are biologically female.

That's it. Take the word away, make it mean something else, whatever - those people still exist, their sex is still female not male, the social and physical consequences of being that sex still exist and still hit the same people whether you agree the name for them is "women" or not.

That's what we are talking about. Those people, whatever name you use for them.

And you, born male, cannot "transition" to be one of those people not because they hate you or refuse to see your inner soul or because they are blinded by rigid ideas of what a woman could be but simply because that is not possible. It is not a thing. Your "transition" is not joining women where we are. It is nothing more than staying where you always were, changing what the word woman means and then crowing "look I'm a woman too!"

So honestly, I have no idea really what your idea of Womanhood is (although I'd love it for you to explain to me). I do not know whether it's truly a miswiring in your mind, or it's your own projection of externalised gender stereotypes, or internalised patriachal disgust, or a fetish, or you just really like having power over female people, or some other thing I can't imagine.

But what I do know is it that whatever it is, it isn't not the same thing as being female-bodied and living ones life with that fixed fact, and the only reason I have any issue with you and TRAs is because your version of being who you are requires me to lie about who I am, to accept a version of "womanhood" that means nothing to me, and to believe that all the reasons I as a person of female body may want space, privacy or support away from those of male body somehow magically do not apply to you because of someting you have imagined we have in common but have never ever ever been able to describe in a way that means anything to me at all.

Datun · 28/05/2025 18:06

Helleofabore · 28/05/2025 17:59

Nah... you may be living the life that you conceptualise as being that of a woman. However, you are living your male perception of how a woman lives. You are living a male person's life interacting with the world with your male body.

It is actually misogynistic to declare that a male person can live as a woman. Because it is not possible.

It's so bloody illogical. Even while these men are staying it out loud.

The definition of a woman never starts with the words 'a man who...'

It never involves disliking your penis, hating your male body, not wanting to inhabit male stereotypes or being a male homosexual.

To these men, women are not normal, human people, with their lives, anatomy and experiences.

We are just a fantasy in their head.

It must be really fucking annoying that we have suddenly become real, materialised, and said no fuck off out of our spaces.

BreatheAndFocus · 28/05/2025 18:07

AYoungTransWoman · 28/05/2025 17:53

Literally this. Idc what stereotypes I exhibit im still a woman. 90% of the time I'm wearing whatevers practical and comfy aha

You’re not. You’re a transwomen - a male person. Woman isn’t a costume you can throw on or an attitude you can adopt. You’re arrogantly - and I actually think unwittingly - dismissing every single female human as nothing. I say unwittingly because I don’t think you’re doing it on purpose. I just think you haven’t even considered us as full human beings.

Helleofabore · 28/05/2025 18:07

ButterflyHatched · 28/05/2025 17:52

Nah, thankfully my workplace is awesome unlike the scenario I posted earlier.

I know a lot of people who have, though - and in one case told they can't use either - and it's humiliating and dehumanising.

We all woke up to a torrent of utter bullshit weeks ago and it just went on and on until recently where the tide seems to finally be turning. Every day the papers were full of even more virulent transphobic guff than they had been for years, and it's like someone pushed the 'on' button on every snarling toilet-policing bigot in the country.

Your actions do not exist in a vacuum. You might not personally be a raging transphobe, but by contributing to a climate that emboldens transphobia, you have done all of us immense harm.

Yes, even the ones who have convinced themselves that dehumanisation and trans-segregation is good, actually.

You are clearly very intelligent, so I refuse to accept that you don't believe your actions have consequences. You know full well how the far right has taken ostensibly feminist talking points and turned them into a culture war. You cannot escape it every time you turn on the news or read a paper.

"Every day the papers were full of even more virulent transphobic guff than they had been for years, and it's like someone pushed the 'on' button on every snarling toilet-policing bigot in the country."

What is this transphobia in our newspapers?

"You might not personally be a raging transphobe, but by contributing to a climate that emboldens transphobia, you have done all of us immense harm".

Oh.. yes... women defending their needs are responsible for other people's reactions.

Hey wims .... just SHUT THE FUCK UP about those needs of yours, discussing them and campaigning for them makes any transphobia YOUR responsibility! JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Remember wims .... we can THINK it, but there is no way to SAY what you need without it being the source of all transphobia. Gosh... didn't we hear this in at least two court cases?

Helleofabore · 28/05/2025 18:09

Datun · 28/05/2025 18:06

It's so bloody illogical. Even while these men are staying it out loud.

The definition of a woman never starts with the words 'a man who...'

It never involves disliking your penis, hating your male body, not wanting to inhabit male stereotypes or being a male homosexual.

To these men, women are not normal, human people, with their lives, anatomy and experiences.

We are just a fantasy in their head.

It must be really fucking annoying that we have suddenly become real, materialised, and said no fuck off out of our spaces.

Yes. This misogyny of them redefining us is off the fucking charts.

But there are new eyes on this thread, the demonstration over the past days must be rather enlightening.

FlirtsWithRhinos · 28/05/2025 18:11

Just need to pick up on this one:

"You know full well how the far right has taken ostensibly feminist talking points and turned them into a culture war."

Yes. Yes they have. So what are we supposed to do, shut up about the injustice being done to us because it's inconvenient to have it mentioned?

Do you know how much of the fucking story of womanhood that is? Don't make a fuss, you'll ruin his career. Don't make a fuss, you'll distract from the cause. Don't make a fuss, he's a man of god and you are just a silly girl.

I guess you don't.

Of course, all of that could be defused so easily, take the breath right out of those far right sails, simply by saying "Actually, no. Trans women are not women, they are trans women. They don't need to be in female spaces, female roles, female sports, female opportunities, claiming to speak for women as women. We need to find a third way that accomodates the gender nonconforming however they identify and also supports women with the real world needs that come with beiing female. We are different, trans women are not women, but we respect women, we respect each other and that is ok".

I wonder why you don't. I wonder why you wring your hands and perform your fear and blame blame blame the women when it is entirely in your power to solve this so esily just by allwing us to exist as separate from you.

akkakk · 28/05/2025 18:11

ButterflyHatched · 28/05/2025 17:22

To my knowledge (please correct me if I'm wrong), neither @AYoungTransWoman or myself have ever been what society would define as men. We both initiated treatment before reaching adulthood.

You could perhaps argue that we have experience of being boys, were you to completely deny our interiority and reject any notion that our experience of our own transness modulates that experience. It would still be inaccurate, but slightly less so.

Very happy to correct you.

You are exactly what society defines as men:

  • someone born male, over the age of 18.
It is literally the very definition of a man

Initiating treatment before reaching adulthood undoubtedly means that you didn't experience adolescence in exactly the same way as all other boys, but you were still born male / born a boy and grew up to become a man.

You both accept that you were born male - born as boys.
All a boy has to do to then become a man is wait 18 years - the man v. boy difference is simply passing your 18th birthday.

Your 'interiority' and experience of your 'transness' does modulate that experience I agree - but not from boy to girl or boy to woman or man to woman... it simply modulates it to a different set of experiences as a boy / man

you are simply a man who has gone through your set of experiences (your lived reality if you like), but all that does is make you a unique man - as with every other man - we are all unique, it would be boring if we were not.

The aspects of you that reject what society labels as 'typically male' simply expand society's notion of how to define a man - if you like, they extend the gender definition for men...

Let us use an example - if all men go out from the cave and hunt, while women stay in the cave and look after the children - then we have two clear societal stereotypes:

  • men hunt
  • women do childcare
If though Ug Junior decides that his career will be to become the cave accountant - recording the number of dinosaurs killed by other men in pictures on the cave wall, then that doesn't mean that Ug is not a man (because he doesn't fit the stereotype of 'men hunt') instead it extends the stereotype to:
  • men hunt
  • men record kills on cave wall
  • women do childcare
Now if we go further and find that little Ug Junior's brother, Thud growing up prefers to look after the children, and doesn't wish to hunt or paint pictures on the cave wall - that doesn't make little Thud a woman - it extends the society definition of men - similarly if little Ugette their sister would rather hunt, then again, she doesn't become a man - she helps to redefine society stereotypes once again, and now you have:
  • men hunt
  • men paint pictures on cave wall
  • men do childcare
  • women do childcare
  • women hunt

and this is how gender works - it is a societal construct... so when you talk about your experiences as a boy forming who you are as an adult - they form the new man you become - you help to extend the societal understanding of what it can mean to be a man - away from narrow stereotypes - which is really healthy for society... because the reality is that they are stereotypes, not rules - they are standard patterns, not prescription.

but at no point do your experiences ever inform you on anything to do with being a woman - you can never understand what that means for the simple reality that you can never be a woman - all you can do is feel a stronger association towards how society describes a woman (perfectly acceptable), and mimic it (acceptable to a degree, not including body mutilation or forcing your way into women only spaces, or trying to live a lie that you are actually a woman) - but that doesn't make you a woman - it just makes you your type of man.

Helleofabore · 28/05/2025 18:11

Would our two male posters who have declared that they know about female breasts like to to tell us all how male 'breast tissue' becomes the interactive system that is behind the breast and endocrine system of a female person?

Surely as 'women', you understand the difference? I mean, being female isn't a costume right? You must know your stuff since you both seem to be claiming to be female breast experts now.

ButterflyHatched · 28/05/2025 18:12

Greyskybluesky · 28/05/2025 17:58

@ButterflyHatched You think you are a woman and thus entitled to use the women's loos.

But there isn't a woman in the world who would take a photo of herself in the women's loos and comment that she is "infiltrating" it.

Women do not "infiltrate" the women's toilets, because they are OUR toilets.

It is not the clothes, the looks. It's the behaviour. It is always the behaviour in the end.

Didn't a bunch of MN'ers do a toilet invasion thing a while back? They seemed very pleased with themselves. Not quite sure what they were actually trying to prove but there was definitely a lot of sneering and mocking going on. What a jolly jaunt. I think it even got picked up by the papers.

I guess if trans people do that, it would be part of a general 'a trans person peed here and nobody was harmed' initiative.

Maybe 'man Friday' was trying to mock trans people? It was clearly trying to achieve something, just like the person who flashed an official meeting a some years ago. I think she must have been trying to prove a point. Not sure what it was though. Just looked like an obnoxious bigot doing a bit of transphobic posturing against a marginalised minority to me.

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 28/05/2025 18:14

NoBinturongsHereMate · 28/05/2025 17:46

Interesting point about missing heir syndrome. I'd forgotten about that one.

I think it is simply the case that there have always been some people who in the face of any evidence whatever will truly and deeply believe that they are not what they obviously are not: the last heir of the Merovingians or Hapsburgs, the unacknowledged child of Paul Getty, or whatever else. It's a bit sad, but generally does no harm because it doesn't as a rule demand or expect that everyone else on the planet has to agree about it and make special allowances for it and alter their way of life to work round that one person's belief.

Helleofabore · 28/05/2025 18:14

FlirtsWithRhinos · 28/05/2025 18:11

Just need to pick up on this one:

"You know full well how the far right has taken ostensibly feminist talking points and turned them into a culture war."

Yes. Yes they have. So what are we supposed to do, shut up about the injustice being done to us because it's inconvenient to have it mentioned?

Do you know how much of the fucking story of womanhood that is? Don't make a fuss, you'll ruin his career. Don't make a fuss, you'll distract from the cause. Don't make a fuss, he's a man of god and you are just a silly girl.

I guess you don't.

Of course, all of that could be defused so easily, take the breath right out of those far right sails, simply by saying "Actually, no. Trans women are not women, they are trans women. They don't need to be in female spaces, female roles, female sports, female opportunities, claiming to speak for women as women. We need to find a third way that accomodates the gender nonconforming however they identify and also supports women with the real world needs that come with beiing female. We are different, trans women are not women, but we respect women, we respect each other and that is ok".

I wonder why you don't. I wonder why you wring your hands and perform your fear and blame blame blame the women when it is entirely in your power to solve this so esily just by allwing us to exist as separate from you.

Edited

Yes Flirts.... we have to SHUT THE FUCK UP WOMEN!

Because we are reliably told that any articulation outside of our thoughts is transphobic and we cannot say it. It causes harm, either hurt or it inflames people. So, the expectation is that we just SHUT THE FUCK UP WOMEN!

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