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?

Exactly

and the OP asked for opinions…which she got!

I guess if you redefine "woman" you can live in a complete lack of reality all the time and not even know it.

It is possible to both think that gender is a societal set of stereotypes AND not think individuals "have" a gender. HTH.

That’s exactly what it is, it was essentially 3 years of discussing how women are represented and affected by gender ideologies, specifically in media.

The reason I believe that I have a gender ID that is shaped by those ideologies is because I find “adult human female” really reductive. I think it implies that’s all woman is - a set of parts, and that’s got to be a bad thing.

I don’t think it’s insane to think that the way our society is set up affects who we are, and I believe we have to accept that to be able to challenge the flaws in it.

It’s not about whether I wasted time learning about feminism and/or gender, I was saying that everytime I post here and say I believe something, people respond with “you’re confused” or “there are intelligent women here” (ie, you’re not one) - like those who have a different belief must be stupid. And like I said, different opinions can still be informed ones.

You are free to think being a woman is "more than a set of body parts" but in doing that you are denying that unfeminine women are, in fact, women.
Because there is literally nothing else that the fashion model, the baby girl, the butch lesbian trucker, and the teenager with autism who doesn't like her breasts have in common.
They don't have the same likes and dislikes or the same presentation or the same personality.

Good for you. It’s just incoherent nonsense though. A woman is simply the name for an adult female person, it’s not “reductive” because it implies nothing else other than the sex of an adult human.

I'm afraid I do disagree, emphatically, that there is 'more to being a woman' than just the fact of existing inside a biologically female body.

Partly because that inevitably starts to fall into metaphysical and quasi religious terms, which certainly not every woman will share, and because it destroys the entire diversity of the sex class.

But mostly because the only real point of this nebulous essence stuff is to serve one purpose only, which is to allow biologically male people to convince others that they could in some way be women, and therefore can use, wreck, destroy and trample female people's rights and spaces and bodies on a fully binary basis. I'm not going to enable that.

The reason I believe that I have a gender ID that is shaped by those ideologies is because I find “adult human female” really reductive. I think it implies that’s all woman is - a set of parts, and that’s got to be a bad thing.

Literally no one on here is saying that ALL a woman is is a 'set of body parts'.

But those body parts are the defining characteristic that all woman have in common. Not a 'feeling' or an affinity with social/cultural stereotypes or anything else the TRAs have put forward.

Within their biological classification, women can be anything they want. Adventurous, security seeking, individualistic, caring, into fashion, into DIY, etc, etc. And all of this rich tapestry of womanhood should be celebrated.

Absolutely no need to throw our material, biological reality out the window while we are doing that though. There is no way to be a woman other than biologically.

“Informed” opinions can still be incoherent and empty of any real insight. There’s a whole conveyor belt of largely worthless academic study.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair

Just because things are being taught in universities doesn't mean they have solid, factual, evidence based foundations - unfortunately.

There are clearly aspects of the social sciences that have gotten carried away with post-modern analysis and Judith Butler-esque convoluted word salad, convincing some people that this is searing intellectual thought, but in reality, is Emperors New Clothes.

If we cannot even define what we mean by a gender identity - (and on the basis of this and every other thread on the topic, we absolutely can't) - then we shouldn't be using it as a basis for anything, let alone laws that impact women's rights, safeguarding, dignity.

Exactly @TheKeatingFive

"The reason I believe that I have a gender ID that is shaped by those ideologies is because I find “adult human female” really reductive."

Why is it reductive? I am like other mammals because I am female. I am fundamentally different to other mammals because I am human. Unless you don't think that women are human in the same way that men are, why is that reductive?

Being female to me, is simply about biology. I have no control over it and it's not a virtue and it doesn't define my value. I might as well identify with my blood type. It has had a profound and unavoidable influence on my life, but I have no way to identify out of being female. Sex is a meaningful and necessary category, but the thing that makes me me is not my reproductive organs, but my human brain.

On the other hand, if identity is shaped by gendered expectations, which vary across cultures and over time, it doesn't follow that 'gender identity' is a coherent, stable, universal category. It also doesn't explain what it means to feel that you do or don't identify with those expectations.

The reason I believe that I have a gender ID that is shaped by those ideologies is because I find “adult human female” really reductive.

It's the least reductive definition that is out there because all it requires is to look at the type of gametes someone makes during the fertile stage of their life. Nothing else matters for it to work. If you try adding other characteristics to the definition you are introducing restrictions.

I think it’s reductive because, IMO, women have spent decades fighting against objectification and essentially being seen as “just a pair of tits.”

Why then would we take the approach that actually, we’re just adult human females. Just a uterus, that’s me. That’s not all we have in common, and it’s not the end of the definition of woman. I don’t actually want to be defined by having a womb.

Sex absolutely exists, and is a biological fact, but it’s not the start and end of who we are.

The reason it’s difficult to find common ground in gender identity is because it’s different across different groups, but actually I think that’s right.

I’m not in the same group as every woman ever, because we happen to share biological fact, we’ve had different lives, different experiences and live in different bodies.

Woman isn’t universal, because how can it possibly be. I’m not the same as an Afghan woman, any woman of colour, any lesbian, any biological mother.

If society uses the biological fact of female to oppress women, through socially constructed gender stereotypes, it’s being classified by sex we should be rejecting, refuse to be limited because you happen to have certain chromosomes.

How on earth can ‘adult human female’ be reductive, in what sense? Do you feel the same way about ‘adult human male’?

I think like a lot of people who buy into GI you are over intellectualising it. Instead of viewing the way women actually survive in the world you are seeking to see something that just isn’t there, you want to come up with some magical meaning that will stop feminists in their tracks, it totally fits with the TIM view that they are ‘better women’ than actual women because they see something that we don’t. Of course they bloody do because they’re men larping as women and playing make believe. They can’t ever have experienced womanhood because they’re not women.

We’ve heard all the arguments as to how women could make this all better if they would just do this or that, be kind, step aside, trust TIM when they say they just want to be their authentic selves. Men have tried to get women to believe things that aren’t true since the beginning of time, and GI is simply another manifestation of that. They couldn’t get us to believe that they are superior to us because they’re men, so they try to tell us that they’re better women than us when they’re pretending to be women. And that’s the problem with ‘beliefs’, they’re not facts. When you ignore facts you put women and girls at risk, and I say again, No Thank You. This whole ideology is laughable and derisory, and I genuinely find it astonishing that anyone believes it even for a second.

I’ve explained that, I’m not just a uterus. I also feel the same way about “adult human” anything, yes - it removes any complexity of who we actually are.

I’m female because I was born one, I’m a woman for a variety of other reasons - many of them external. I do “woman” in the way that I do it, based on the life I’ve had, and really resent being told I’m doing it “wrong” by those who’d have me in a group because of a set of chromosomes.

I also don’t think any trans woman, ever, has ever told me they’re a “better” woman than I am. I don’t believe that all trans identifying people, of any type, are part of a huge agenda to victimise women. By and large, I’m not sure it’s that deep.

‘If society uses the biological fact of female to oppress women, through socially constructed gender stereotypes, it’s being classified by sex we should be rejecting, refuse to be limited because you happen to have certain chromosomes.’

And here we have it, let’s ignore the material reality of women and girls, because if we remove that then women and girls can’t complain and fight against the terrible things that happen to us, precisely because of our sex class. This is the dismantling of our rights as women in order to erode safeguarding, therefore opening the door to any amount of oppression from men. If you truly believe this then you have drunk deep of the Kool Aid. This isn’t a woman problem, it’s a man problem, and removing our rights to distinguish ourselves as a sex class wholly separate from men, whose material reality is wholly different from men, would be the biggest act of self harm women could enact on themselves.

You seem to be missing the word ‘human’ in ‘adult human female’ and I’m not sure why.

I am the same as every woman ever, because our ability to participate equally in society is completely dependent on our ability to control our fertility and therefore be economically independent.

Take away rights to contraception and you take away rights to education and rights to work for women, but not for men.

What do you think happens to women in societies where men are allowed to dominate them physically with no recourse to the law? Do you think the impact on men and women is the same?

More than anything, I don’t understand how it’s possible to post on this site and believe that sex is just a matter of chromosomes. The people posting about mastitis, birth trauma, abortions etc - not men.

This is all just more luxury beliefs isn't it.

It absolutely blows my mind that this poster is prepared to let the very collective of people that have fucked us over for centuries into our clearly, biologically defined class. What could possibly go wrong??🤞🏼
Honestly, completely bonkers.
What is going on in your head? And what on earth were they teaching you in your gender studies lectures??

Yes indeed so. Further, if gender is a societal set of stereotypes, it follows individuals can't be a particular gender. (No individual human is, or could be, a set of any sort.)

Of course you can be a particular sex. (You are a particular sex.) So if "gender" means "sex", then you can be a particular gender. (But in that case, of course you can't change gender, because you can't change sex.)

These two different meanings of "gender" - "set of stereotypes"/synonym for "sex" - have a propensity to confuse the unwary. (Even, perhaps, some 'gender studies' graduates.)

I wonder, @SleeplessInWherever: did you at all, in your studies, ever come across or hear mention of the notion of a fallacy of equivocation?

[It has been fascinating, reading this thread, to see so many clear and explicit examples of someone's lack of awareness of her own failure to understand.]

You're not just a uterus or a pair of tits. 100% agree with this. That's where your personality, experiences, relationships, etc, etc all come into play.

But you are biologically different to a male. And women are not going be better off if we to ignore such a basic, self evident fact.

If we do this, we become unable to safeguard women in changing rooms, toilets and situations where they need intimate care.

We become unable to protect women from men when they need safe spaces to heal in domestic violence shelters and rape crisis counselling.

We expose women to male violence (sexual and otherwise) in prisons.

We severely limit women's participation, success, reward and safety in sport.

We fail to respect lesbian women's rights to their own dating scenes / platforms.

Absolutely none of these consequences are positive developments for women.

let’s ignore the material reality of women and girls

Is this the result of privilege? People take rights for granted? Lack of historical perspective? Exceptionalism?

Do people not realise that what men can do in Afghanistan, they have done and can do elsewhere?

Do they not understand how rights are lost?

I would answer sensibly, but your last section implies stupidity. Again. Fairly common theme here isn’t it.

I think it implies that’s all woman is - a set of parts, and that’s got to be a bad thing.

The grammar failure in this sentence is interesting, because it falls down the gap in the logic failure you seem to be suffering from.

Should it read "I think it implies that's all a woman is"?

Or "I think it implies that's all 'woman' is"?

Those are two very different meanings that you don't seem to be able to disentangle.

We're trying to define words, while you seem to think we're trying to define people.

"Woman" needs a very specific meaning to be useful. And that meaning of the word being constrained - to refer only to sex and nothing else - is a way to not constrain actual women.

I think it’s reductive because, IMO, women have spent decades fighting against objectification and essentially being seen as “just a pair of tits.”

Why then would we take the approach that actually, we’re just adult human females. Just a uterus, that’s me. That’s not all we have in common, and it’s not the end of the definition of woman. I don’t actually want to be defined by having a womb.

It's not reducing you to just a pair of tits and a uterus though is it. It's merely a statement of biological fact, wick incidentally doesn't require tits or a uterus. My mum had a full hysterectomy and oophrectomy (sp?). She's still a woman. I held my very lovely friend this week whilst she cried following a medically necessary mastectomy. She's still a woman.

'Adult, human female' isn't the only thing most women have in common. But it's the only thing all women have in common.