"Biological sex is a multidimensional variable with various components" - Thread 2

[MissScarletInTheBallroom]

The last thread ended with Tandora attempting to sidestep the question about what she would say if her daughter had been raped by a trans woman in a female only space and no longer believed that trans women should be in female only spaces as a consequence.

Her last reply was along the lines of, "The same thing I would say if she had been bullied by a green person at school and said she no longer wanted to go to school with green people."

@Tandora can we have a serious answer?

As regards the allegation that men who identify as women would be at risk in the male toilets.

I’ve read several times recently that such a man, I think he may be American, has been recording what happens when he uses male only toilets. Nothing happens. He just goes in, men don’t attack him or make him feel unsafe.

Only one man’s perspective, but I think he recently reached his 1000th visit/use without incident.

I would have thought rival football team supporters faced the greatest risk in men's loos.

At least if they came into the ladies they'd have to have a particular shirt on.

A man wearing a rival football shirt in a toilet full of other team supporters may be at risk, goths and emos get abuse, too.

Lots of people choosing to express themselves with clothes. And we expect the law to keep them safe in the spaces that they are entitled to use.

Gender expression is no different - its just men expressing themselves through clothes. They are still men and the law should keep them safe in the spaces they are entitled to use.

We cant treat them as 'not men' and then act surprised when they claim they are women and children think transition is possible.

I’m in the US so was thinking about studies like this

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/ncvs-trans-press-release/

To be fair I don’t know if that makes trans people specifically more vulnerable in toilets than non trans people.

And agreed it’s not for women to sort out but for society and communities to come up with a better solution that both protects women’s same sex spaces and creates something extra to accommodate the gender fluid / non binary / gender identity part of society.

I believe we should be able to protect the science of sex being binary without trying to shove everyone into a binary system on a social level.

Your sex isn’t assigned to you. It is you. You know because it literally impacts your body and its physiological responses.

Sex isn’t observed at birth - sex is who you are and observed every day.

The language you use to distance yourself from reality may help - rather like sitting on your hand to numb it before stroking yourself and saying there there.

The biological man is still a man. Your hand is still yourself no matter how much you try to distance from the reality.

That is the US though not the UK. Not the same as transgender but i.e. drag queens have been mainstream for a very long time i.e. Paul O'Grady as Lily Savage.

There are multiple accounts of many types of delusion across history, it's simply that the specific nature of the fixed false belief takes different forms. The glass delusion in 17th century Europe, for example, resulted in people thinking that they were made of glass and might shatter if touched roughly or subjected to force. This phenomenon, like most luxury beliefs, tended to affect the privileged classes.

The insistence that someone has actually, literally changed sex if they believe they have is the 21st century's equivalent of the glass delusion.

How do you explain hijra in India, if diversion from the sex binary is a luxury belief of a privileged population? They are amongst the most marginalised and discriminated against, but they are an enduring identity for centuries.

Citing the Williams Institute is like citing a Pink News opinion piece.

Are you saying that makes violence against trans people less likely to be higher than against non trans people? Because the UK is more tolerant of cross dressing?

Are they likely to have deliberately skewed the data from the National Crime Victimization Survey though?

Just from prior chat with an American gay friend of mine, I got the impression that cross dressing/ drag queens was more acceptable and mainstream here.

As they've been part of culture including family entertainment shows for a long time. I've known a few men who have dressed as woman and used men's loos no issues.

So possibly it is less likely to evoke violence than in the USA. I don't really know of course.

Again of course I'm not suggesting trangender is the same just obviously there are perception similarities.

I'm sorry, are you really saying that you see a woman's desire that she only gets intimate care from a person of the same physical sex as her(1) and a trans woman's desire to give intimate care to a woman who asks that she be treated only by a woman as equal needs?

Do you not see anything a little - wrong with that framing? Is it not obvious to you that these things are not symmetrical?

This is an absolutely genuine question. I am so shocked by your statement that I am asking in the hope that I have misunderstood.

(1) because whether or not there exist women who both care enough about who touches them to the degree of asking for a female doctor and include male people with female self image in their personal definition of "female", there absolutely do exist plenty of women who care enough about who touches them to ask for a female doctor and do not include male people with female self image in their personal definition of "female", as clearly evidenced by the strong feelings on this thread and in the wider social reaction to Dr Upton's admission he'd consider himself female fro that purpose unless explicitly asked to leave)

"tended to affect".
Not "exclusively affected".

Hijras are natal males who wear traditionally feminine clothing, and to the best of my understanding, identify as having a non-binary gender identity. Gender identity and biological sex are distinct concepts. Hijra's haven't changed sex either.

So to clarify; are you saying the hijra experience is not delusional?

Tandora's quote above

"Trans women understand themselves to be female - and lots of other people accept this too! If a patient asked for a female doctor they wouldn't have any reason to think that patient wasn't comfortable with them."

That's an extremely concerning justification of assault, which is what any sort of treatment without informed consent is.

"there is no difference between a deliberate deception about birth sex and a failure to disclose birth sex.". From sexual consent now but the same principle applies.

https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/prosecutors-publish-updated-deception-sex-guidance

It's irrelevant to any consideration of consent that "lots of people accept this".

As you yourself have said many times, who knows what another person experiences. So the truth is that you have no idea whether this "experience of their own sex as a woman" that you are certain trans women really do have in reality has anything whatsoever to do with the people who have female (in the boring old observed at birth sense) bodies.

And nor do they, and nor does anyone else.

All you know is that they believe it does.

Ultimately, the truth of that is unknowable.

So given that following your own arguments we've got no idea how what trans women feel relates to the people who have female (in the boring old observed at birth sense) bodies, or even if it does at all, it's a wee bit of an overreach for you to be claiming not only that they really definitely yes you are very very very sure certainly yes they really definitely are women and that makes them just like the people who have female (in the boring old observed at birth sense) bodies, not just in effable ways of the mind but also in boring practical everyday body ways like getting naked in changing rooms and getting to touch female patients who only want to be touched by another woman.

Because really, while we know they are very very sure, we don't know that they are very very right.

But what we do know is that there definitely are people who have female (in the boring old observed at birth sense) bodies, and that having one of those female (in the boring old observed at birth sense) bodies brings with it physical and social consequences that are nothing whatsoever to do with ones personal and unknowable sense of ones sex but simply to do with external fact of the body, what it can do and how others react to it, and how we in turn react to that,

And therefore it's entirely reasonable to say stop all this flimflammery about how people with male (in the boring old observed at birth sense) bodies may or may not have inner feelings that may or may not be the same as inner feelings that some of the people with female (in the boring old observed at birth sense) bodies may or may not feel because all of that is utterly irrelevant to providing practical supports for people with female (in the boring old observed at birth sense) bodies for the challenges they encounter in the world because of those bodies.

And whatever it is that some people with male (in the boring old observed at birth sense) bodies may or may not feel that may or may not be the same thing that some of the people with female male (in the boring old observed at birth sense) may or may not feel, what it manifestly, obviously, 100% is not is anything that gives them a claim to the supports that people with female (in the boring old observed at birth sense) bodies need based on what they encounter in the world because of those bodies, for the very obvious reason that the people with male (in the boring old observed at birth sense) bodies who may or may not feel the same thing that some of the people with female (in the boring old observed at birth sense) bodies feel do not have female bodies, they have male ones!

@Tandora

If being a trans women is nothing to do with being physically female (in the boring observed at birth sense) and nothing to do with social/cultural stereotypes about the opposite sex, while single sex spaces and supports are entirely to do with physically female (in the boring observed at birth sense) and the social/cultural stereotypes around that physical sex, why is it so important to you that trans women are included in those supports when by your own definition (or rather, since you are unable to give a definition, by the gaps where you insist the definition does not lie) these things are nothing to do with what makes a trans woman a woman?

What a curious answer.

The question was not how do trans people know their own sex, it was how do they know what it is like to be another sex.

What does a trans person's experience of their own sex have to do with the sex of anyone else?

I mean, I hate to state the obvious here, but how can a type of mental "sex" we can't even detect yet let alone explain be the "real" division point between men and women for practical things like women's rights, single sex spaces and so on when all these things predate the knowledge that a "hereditable polygenic underpinning related to sex hormone-signalling gene complexes which operate systemically across the body, including in the brain" makes some men actaully women?

And don't give me "but we've always know about sex, we just understand it better now" - because if we'd always known some men are "really" women, we'd have included them from the start wouldn't we?

However you cut it, men who believe (whether rightly or wrongly) they are women were not part of the group whose needs defined what we now have in place to support women, and that means they don't have any moral claim to them simply because (you claim) we have changed how we understand womanhood to include them as well.

It's like claiming that Watling Street was always built for cars because 1900+ years after it was built cars came along and wanted to use it!

The creator of the trans flag, Robert Hogge, a male who identified as a "trans woman", would steal and wear his mum's underwear. Later, he began to steal the underwear of random women. This was for reasons of sexual arousal. He wrote about this in his memoir: "The feelings I had, dressed as a woman, ran the gamut of human emotions. Sexual excitement topped the list of what came over me while wearing women's clothes."

@Tandora, is this what you had in mind when you stated "trans women understand themselves to be female"? A creepy man getting himself off by cross-dressing in undergarments stolen from women.

YES!!! Halle-bloody-lujah we got there in the end!

Trans women are different to us! We are not the same! This thing they experience beacuse of their "inner knowledge of their own sex" is not a meaningful other version of the thing we experience as "knowing whatever we think about our sex we still have female bodies and everybody else sees that too"!

I have no idea how trans women feel! None whatsoever! That doesn’t mean I hate them or think they are lying or don't want them to be happy, it's just that the thing they think we have in common is not, in fact, a thing!

So can we please stop this ridiculous charade that somehow two totally unrelated concepts that happen to currently both (sometimes) have the label "woman" have anything to do with each other and focus on what is best for each group in their own right?

It reflects the reality of a huge proportion of humanity who live with the repercussions of having a boring old recognised at birth female body though. And whatever Dr Upton may or may not feel inside, he is not one of those people, and his needs and feelings do not change the needs and expereinces of those people based on their boring old observed at birth body one iota.

Now me, true complexities of human diversiity notwithstanding, I think those boring old recognised at birth female body people still matter and still deserve support, so if your vision for the special complexites of human diversity means taking that then I'm sorry but you need to do better.

Because until all of society reaches your sophisticated levels of understanding, us simplistic boring old recognised at birth female body people still have to deal with the simplistic boring old recognised at birth female body consequences, and for as along as that is true the simplistic boring old recognised at birth female body people need rights, and clear language, and a social, cultural and political voice as well.

And that means the Dr Uptons of this world, as lovely as they may be and as sad as it may make them, will sometimes have to hear "No, this is not for you. Because while you may feel like a woman, may even by some measure be a woman, nevertheless, you are not like these people and they matter too".

I wonder if @Tandora has the same problems in other areas of her life.

"Mum mum can we go to the beach and swim in the sea?"

"I don't understand what you mean by sea"

"The sea mum! The sea! You know! The big salty water with waves and tides and fish!"

"I know there is a beach near us with water, but how can I know that it is the Sea? If we go to the beach the waves are coming up and down the shore. We can't say for certain what is the water and what is the land. And some of the water isn't water all, it's the bottoms of boats and the bodies of fish. And the same water has different names in different places, so how do I know that what you mean by sea is what I mean by sea? And there are seas on the moon that have no water at all. So no, I'm sorry you can't go, because how you can swim in the sea when you can't explain what it is?"

"But mum we went with Angie's mum last week and it wasn't a problem at all, I played on a boogie board and I swam and it was fine"

"No I'm sorry that is impossible. A simplistic understanding of Sea is just not going to be good enough for anyone to be able to swim in it."

"Aw Muuuuuuuuum"

My impression, for what it's worth, is that these traditional arrangements for a third gender are pretty honest and pragmatic. They recognise that some men are "feminine" and give them a named category of their own which allows them to present and behave 'in the manner of a woman" - which is what the Samoan version, fa'afafine, actually means.

It's that "in the manner of" which makes it honest. There's no nonsense about sex being 'a "nebulous dogwhistle", as Doctor Upton put it, and no appropriation of the word "woman" or trying to make people pretend they see no difference between a woman and a person of male sex but feminine gender.

If trans activists here had taken the same route and developed their own named category and social role, instead of this bludgeoning insistence that we all have to say trans women "are" women, and unilaterally renaming women "cis" women, and being hellbent on invading every space set aside for women, there would have been a lot less conflict.