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 couldn't care less who or what you are.

I'm telling you what a woman is.

It's a word used to describe half the human population who all have something in common which distinguishes us from the other half of the human population.

That means you don't get to make up your own definition.

You’re right, you can’t escape your biology that you were born with. I’ve never said that was a possibility, to be fair.

You also can’t escape the reality of that biology. What we all have the freedom to do, however, is decide the extent to which that impacts you or matters to you on a personal level. Which I have, in the ways I’ve laid out.

My biological fact isn’t as important to me as a variety of other things, and doesn’t impact my relationships with or attitudes towards others as much as other things.

Bumping my post from last night, because it’s key.

However the law does have to objectively define who you are,

Similarly you could write a long essay on what it means to be British, but the law takes a more prosaic view of nationality.

But how is this relevant to the legal definition of a woman?

Yes, the law has been ruled very clearly that in the keystone piece of British equality and diversity legislation, the Equality Act 2010, a woman is female. Not “my lovely friend who is male but really a woman and always uses women’s spaces and me and my friends don’t mind”

an adult human female, and it also refers to minor human females for legal purposes. Girls.

If woman is meant to describe a persons internal sense of self rather than describe a person who is female what single word can I use to describe an adult female human?

Quite. But having written that essay, the personal views I held and had put in it wouldn’t change because policy says so.

Policy around sex does obviously protect single sex spaces, again - that’s fact. Those facts don’t change people’s personal views on how necessary that is for them personally, and their views on it.

Views that they’re entitled to, even if those policies exist.

Female, you’ve just said it. Unless I’ve missed something!

You are missing something. If I said look at that female in that field how would you know if I was referring to the cow or the woman standing next to it

But you can be a female human child.

Woman is adult female human. That is the definition of that word, whatever anyone else wants it to mean, it has a definition.

Your identity is not linked to your sex, you are absolutely right there. But being a woman is part of your identity, because you are an adult female human and you therefore have elements of adult female human which impact your identity.

Being a woman is not an identity. It is quite simply your sex within your species. Much like an adult female horse is a mare, whereas a juvenile female horse is a filly. Adult male horse is stallion or gelding (bits depending), juvenile male horse is a colt.

You are conflating biological terms and classifications with identity.

Absoluetely

Woman is adult female human. That is the definition of that word, whatever anyone else wants it to mean, it has a definition.

And the equivalent word exists in every language - being one of the oldest and most fundamental words.

And the only reason you can translate between "woman" and a word in another language is because they share the common definition "adult human female".

If you start playing games insisting that the word "woman" in English means anything other than adult human female, you can no longer translate it to other languages.

Not only that, the implication is that it should matter to others. I’m more than happy for people to believe all manner of implausible things. I draw the line at having to validate these beliefs when I do not share them, especially when it’s to my detriment.

What we all have the freedom to do, however, is decide the extent to which that impacts you or matters to you on a personal level

Do you think all women have this everywhere?

Do you think women had this freedom in 1930? 1972?

Do you think this freedom can’t be taken away?

The legal illiteracy that accompanies it, is even more baffling in this context because it relies on going from a supposedly intellectual position to one that's incoherent, unworkable and makes no sense because 'be kind'. Meanwhile the very people most affected by gender ID - vulnerable women and children aren't treated kindly, concerns about them are dismissed as irrelevant and sex is redefined as a social construction!

And I'm going to re-post this point too.

The law is kind of relevant to discussions about vulnerable individuals and definitions of sex under the law which offer vulnerable individuals various protections.

(Ironically this also covers protections for transpeople).

We don't get to forget the law and the ramifications of law and how the law affects us if the law refers to SEX and NOT gender or wishy washy concepts of who we think we are and what our inner true identity is.

To put bluntly: The law couldn't give a fuck if you think you are not a human and instead are a fairy. Suggestions that the law and how it defines sex doesn't apply to you starts to make you sound like a bloody Freeman of the Land crackpot.

Take a look at Kabul, for instance, in the 70s, and today.

Btw we are witnessing another demonstration of trying to use language to control debate and society.

A reminder.
The only definitions that matter in practice are legal ones. All others are waffle poppycock.

I find the photos of women smiling walking in the park in short sleeves and skirts in Kabul and Tehran absolutely chilling.

I agree, people can write all the bollocks essays about how womanhood is a shimmering ineffable feeling that they like, at uni, but it doesn’t mean anything in the real world. And sense is returning to law and policy.

I’m still not getting a reply to my questions 😟

Not all of them directly to you, however as there are quite a few responses along similar themes what I’m trying to do is answer those themes, in the (perhaps vain) hope that other people who said the same thing will see them.

I can see, for example, that you asked about the victim comment I made. I have explained that, in terms of the group efforts (which a thread yesterday saying “here’s where we took the piss out of someone confirm) and the constant questions of the exact same type by the same people, and the laughing amongst each other.

The replies around that may have been directed at other posters who had said the same thing, or asked the same thing, but I did try to clarify. It doesn’t seem to make sense to say the same answers repeatedly to the various people who ask those questions.

Of course I don’t think all women have the same freedoms, same priorities and same experience.

It isn’t either 1930 or 1972.

It can also be taken away, but if/when it is, I’ll react then rather than in advance.

I don’t see trans people as a threat in that regard. Because to use an analogy from last night, someone else identifying as a banana doesn’t make me an apple. It changes nothing about who or what I am.

It can also be taken away, but if/when it is, I’ll react then rather than in advance.

Its much harder to get back rights that have been taken away than it is to retain the rights you already have.

I’d probably just say cow, if I meant cow.