Trans sibling in law

[Primrose86]

DH's sibling has just come out as a man. She is 26 and autistic, lives at home with mum, spends life on the Internet, got kicked out of school at 16 etc etc She has plans to go overseas and transition in germany where apparently you can get surgeries on the public health system while living with her grandpa. Her mum is fully supportive of this.

How should I react to all this. Should I start referring to him as my brother in law? What usually happens after people come out. I assume they progress to hormones and surgery but honestly based on what I read, Germany is quite resistant to health tourists who never paid in even if they are citizens. Are people really happy identifying as another gender when they wouldn't look like the other gender?

I assume the person you are referring to as being "directly below" marshmallow is me.

I said I don't have a gender identity. Not that I'm not affected by gender expectations.

There’s a difference between being oppressed by sexist stereotypes and expectations and having an internal sense of feeling like a woman.

That’s how I see gender (the social construct) and gender identity (a belief akin to a religious identity as far as I can make out)

You are confused, because in your post right here you’ve conflated the two different meanings of gender that I outlined in my post.

The person below my previous post says they don’t have a gender identity. That is, they don’t believe in the idea of an innate, ineffable feeling of maleness or femaleness. That isn’t the same as not being affected by gender as a social construct.

To reiterate: if you believe gender is outside the person (as a social construct), you can perfectly well also think that you don’t have a gender identity (as in, an innate inside feeling of gender). These two things are not mutually incompatible.

And, we could perfectly well redefine “gender identity” as something more like “one’s subjective experience of being interpolated into socially-constructed gender roles”, and then it would mean something more aligned with gender in the first sense I described.

BUT (and it’s a big but), that isn’t how gender ideologues or gender activists currently use the term. Largely because then being transgender wouldn’t make any sense, as there wouldn’t be any mismatch between internal and external senses of sex/gender. It would simply be understood as a discomfort with society’s expectations of gendered norms, which is exactly the same thing feminists have always complained about. There wouldn’t be anything meaningful to transition from or to.

Still condescending, got it.

I haven’t conflated anything that isn’t really clearly, already conflated. You can’t have lived a life under that social construct of gender and not been affected or shaped by that in anyway, nobody is immune to that.

The way you have been affected by the societal construct of gender, is your gender identity.

Not having a gender identity would imply that gender norms and expectations have had no impact on your life, your development, or your person. If that was the case, there’d be nothing to be critical of.

I’m not confused, I think you’re wrong.

The way you have been affected by the societal construct of gender, is your gender identity.

OK.

In which case, women don't share the same gender identity as trans women, do they?

You're using a different definition of gender identity to everyone I have ever spoken to about this.

Exactly. I’m really not sure why some people have trouble with understanding this.

Nobody else has ever said that gender is a social construct, and that the way those constructs shape who you are is your gender identity?

It seems quite a lot of people accept the first part, but not the second.

Whats agender then?

This thread's a great demonstration of coercive control that underpins this whole ideology:
You will affirm, you will call this vulnerable young woman a man because I demand you do. If you don't you're a bad person, a transphobe, you'll be alienated from your family etc etc.

The positive thing is that people are now refusing to be bullied. Are insisting on speaking up and trying to protect the young and vulnerable who for too long were abandoned and left in the clutches of the trans extremists seeking to use them for their own purposes

And this needs to be said.

The behaviour of the OPs SIL is not good. The OP says that they behave in a way that's something that should be talked about more.

I always say it's fine for the do going interferers who know fuck all to tell you how you should behave if you have a family member do this. They know nothing.

It is like a grenade being thrown into a family.

We need to remember how many families have dysfunction relationships and wholly unacceptable behaviour.

I always say to don't respond to the identity. Be conscious of behaviour. That's what should guide you.

What you shouldn't do is tolerate behaviour you wouldnt tolerate from someone who isn't trans.

The OPs SIL is clearly deeply troubled. That doesn't mean she shouldnt be held to account for coercive behaviour. Nor should family members pander to unreasonable demands. Unreasonable demands remain unreasonable regardless of identity.

If we are talking about equality then this is really relevant. We actually treat people the same. And if someone acts like a dickhead, we respond to this accordingly. We don't just roll over and pander to it.

There’s a really clear difference between trans women, and biological women. Trans women haven’t generally been socialised as women.

That really obvious fact doesn’t change the way that someone identifies in their own skin, which we don’t live in.

I’m not really all that interested how men “identify”.

I have a massive problem with the ghoulish 'allies' who berate family members.

They can fuck of to the far side of fuck and keep on fucking off.

They are using vulnerable people to demonstrate how woke and right on they are.

It's reprehensible.

Yes but the way they identify in their own skin has got bugger all to do with the rest of us.

And therein lies the problem.

Nobody ever asked the female swimmers, for example, if they agreed that they shared a gender identity with Lia Thomas. (The only female swimmer who was actually known to have a gender identity was Iszac Henig, who identified as a trans man.)

So when you have someone saying, "I identify as a woman/man therefore I belong in women's/men's spaces" they are basically saying, "I identify as one of you and I don't give a shit whether you agree with that or not".

So Afghanistan women identify with being denied an education?

Do you extend this to other things like class and race?

there have been a lot of people on FWR explaining how gender identity works (in their opinion)

trans people, trans allies, random people who think they are the only ones that understand nuance 😒

i think i can safely say that the explanation given by sleepless makes the least sense

‘The person directly below you doesn’t have a gender identity. They have been unaffected by those social expectations, or constructs, and have somehow escaped the impact of them.‘

Where did I say I have been unaffected by them, or that I have escaped the impact of them? Please don’t misquote me. Unfortunately, it suits certain sections of society to use these regressive terms and stereotypes, mostly men, because it is advantageous for them, and sadly, some women find it necessary to ingratiate themselves with those men for what they perceive to be their own advantage, but I think is often just a lack of confidence in their own abilities. Just because I don’t have a GI, doesn’t mean that I can opt out of having to deal with the consequences of the people that perpetuate these stereotypes, but I don’t have to engage with it by playing their silly games and pretending to agree with things I know to be false, such as GI.

For your information, there are some very intelligent, knowledgeable women on this board, with real life experiences that have formed their views, you’d best bring your A game if you think you can best them.

‘The person below my previous post says they don’t have a gender identity. That is, they don’t believe in the idea of an innate, ineffable feeling of maleness or femaleness. That isn’t the same as not being affected by gender as a social construct.’

Thank you @marshmallowpuff for pointing this out, I have just corrected that presumption myself! If it’s one thing I hate it’s people putting words in my mouth.

Haha, I thought it was me @PractisingMyTelekenipsis my reply was exactly the same!

As I said above, it’s not impossible that gender identity could be defined as you have done here; that’s a way of thinking about identity as primarily social that meshes perfectly well with both “gender critical” and second-wave feminism.

BUT (and, as I said above, it’s a big but), that’s exactly the opposite of how “identity” is understood by proponents of transgenderism. That really ISN’T how gender ideologues use it. For them, “identity”, and “gender identity”, is an inner inborn sense of essential maleness or femaleness (eg. identity in its etymological sense of “sameness to oneself”). That’s why the “born in the wrong body” trope became popular; that’s why they say gender identity is like being born gay. That’s why “trans” makes sense to them: because it’s a “mismatch” between inner “gender identity” and biological sex.

It sounds awfully like you might actually really be gender critical, @SleeplessInWherever. 😂

Hi @Primsose86,

I am sorry that this thread has been Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition (FUBAR). Your original and subsequent posts showed that you have a real concern for your DH's sister and how you can best help her to travel forward. I don't have any personal advice to offer but I would suggest that your relationship is is one step removed. You might be best served by following your DH. Let what works for him work for you. His relationship with her is closer than your relationship with her and, truth be told, without your relationship with your DH, you wouldn't have any relationship with his sister.

Please don't try to overthink it?

I think what this thread confirms is the absolute absurdity of gender ideology as a concept, because it’s all about feelings, which appear, we are led to believe, to be fluid, arbitrary, subject to change at a moment’s notice, and open to interpretation depending on the day of the week, which is all very well, but when we need to legislate for the safety, privacy and dignity of women and girls, facts need to be at the forefront.

What @LadyBracknellsHandbagg said.

"I'm concerned about my vulnerable sil."

"Your concerns are transphobic. The only thing that matters is affirmation"

"I'm concerned that she's at risk due to various factors"

"Oh they don't matter. As long as you've virtue signaled your allyship, nothing else matters"

"But safeguarding"

"Safeguarding is irrelevant if someone identifies as trans because identity is everything and the only thing that matters is affirmation"