What is "trans" and why does it justify undoing sex in law, society, culture and history?

[FlirtsWithRhinos]

In the Trolls thread @Tandora and I discovered that in a recent thread she had thought she was very clear about what "trans" is while I thought she was simply describing symptoms that could have many causes and did not justify why these symptoms should be treated as actual material facts by others.

• Trolls thread with our interaction on this page: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5420701-a-little-piece-of-insight?page=15&reply=147554941

• my question on the earlier thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5420701-a-little-piece-of-insight?page=15&reply=147554941

Clearly I missed something in that earlier thread but I can't go back because it has reached its post limit, so rather than derail the trolls thread, I am restating my question here.

Looking forward to @Tandora engaging with my questions to help me understand what I missed about her position in the original thread.

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Tandora · 02/10/2025 21:28
Right- this is your question. which is why im trying to explain what being trans is. It's entirely relevant, the reason people can't comprehend the issue is that they simply can't comprehend what it is to be trans.
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FlirtsWithRhinos · 02/10/2025 23:13
But Tandora you haven't explained what being trans is. All you've done is played the old TRA game of "Not that" when anyone else tries suggest an definition, any definition at all, that appears to fit the random claims you are making that feeling very wrong in the sex you actually are is somehow interchangeable with being the sex you are not, or that a characteristic of the mind somehow overrides the reality and consequences of differences of the body for both the trans person and for others.

You have made all sort of hand wringing emotional claims on behalf of trans people, and roundly insulted everyone who doesn't accept your argument of "they just are, alright" as closed minded and uneducated (which frankly would be hilarious to anyone who'd ever met me), and yet never once explained exactly why this thing makes the differences of sex and the social consequences of those differences, facts that are entirely and unproblematically accepted as real in all other circumstances, suddenly inconsequential and irrelevant in the face of a trans person's mental self image.

So I'll ask you again.

What is "being trans" Tandora?
Is it being one sex but with a deep and aching wish you were the other sex, maybe like a blind person has a deep and aching wish to see, or a lonely little girl has a deep and aching wish that she had been born as one of the popular kids instead?

Or is it actually being, in an innate mental way, in ways we don't yet understand, the other sex, implying that sex is not in fact a descriptor of the body but of the mind?

Because take away the emotional manipulation and neither definition actually justifies the demands being made of women in its name.

Neither definition changes the fact that people with female bodies do exist and do face social and physical consequences because of those bodies, and neither a man's deep feeling that he should have had a female body, nor a man's deep feeling that women don't need to have a female body, changes the embodied experiences and needs and self knowledge of the people who actually have a female body one iota.

Because these are things that are entirely to do with the experiences of women, and so no experience or feeling, no matter how genuine, of a man is relevant to them.

And regardless of which definition you go for, in fact regardless of any definition you go for that places more weight on a man's idea of himself as a woman than the embodied fact of female existence, outside his own mind he is simply not relevant to who women in the original female sense are and what women in the original female sense need at all.

No definition of woman that is stretched to include male people is more relevant to the needs and experiences and reality of female people than the simple old fashioned sex based definition and there is sinply no way round that.
face of a trans person's mental self image.

So I'll ask you again.

What is "being trans" Tandora?

Is it being one sex but with a deep and aching wish you were the other sex, maybe like a blind person has a deep and aching wish to see, or a lonely little girl has a deep and aching wish that she had been born as one of the popular kids instead?

Or is it actually being, in an innate mental way, in ways we don't yet understand, the other sex, implying that sex is not in fact a descriptor of the body but of the mind?

Because take away the emotional manipulation and neither definition actually justifies the demands being made of women in its name.

Neither definition changes the fact that people with female bodies do exist and do face social and physical consequences because of those bodies, and neither a man's deep feeling that he should have had a female body, nor a man's deep feeling that women don't need to have a female body, changes the embodied experiences and needs and self knowledge of the people who actually have a female body one iota.

Because these are things that are entirely to do with the experiences of women, and so no experience or feeling, no matter how genuine, of a man is relevant to them.

And regardless of which definition you go for, in fact regardless of any definition you go for that places more weight on a man's idea of himself as a woman than the embodied fact of female existence, outside his own mind he is simply not relevant to who women in the original female sense are and what women in the original female sense need at all.

No definition of woman that is stretched to include male people is more relevant to the needs and experiences and reality of female people than the simple old fashioned sex based definition and there is sinply no way round that.

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@Tandora I don't have much free time this afternoon. Please don't take slow replies as bad faith and be assured I will be coming back to this thread when I have to engage properly as I really appreciate you wanting to explain this to me.

You haven't shared your research though.

You have referred to a popular science book written many decades ago and I don't disagree that it's an entertaining book, but it was written by Oliver Sacks.

Is your research not yet published?

You do not have a theory, you have a hypothesis.

Furthermore, you have gone beyond that to make assertions about how society should change the support it currently gives to women, what rights and protections women should be allowed to expect for themselves, and indeed called other posters closed minded based on your hypothesis.

People have posted examples of people who identify as trans but do not seem to fit your theories.

For your hypothesis to be valid, before it can even progress to be a theory, you need to explain why these examples do not disprove it.

This is basic scientific method!

You absolutely should not be advocating for the types of changes you are, which have direct and material disadvantages to women, based on what currently seems to be a trivially falsifiable hypothesis.

If you want your hypothesis to be taken seriously you have to engage with these exceptions.

Exactly what struck me. Apart from being unnecessarily complicated, it's an illogical classification system.

Exactly

All this could ever show is that he's a male with some atypical brain activity.

Not that he's 'really a woman'

I have been polite. I have no engaged in any kind of patronising tone.

Why would I have to be segregated in your utopia based on something that a man did to me?

Trans people, by your analysis, are trans because of something internal to them.

I have trauma because of something a man did to me and your answer is to exclude me based on something a man did to me?

@Tandora That is so unfair, sharing my theories and research is exactly what I am trying to do.

You have not given us a single piece of evidence for your assertions about trans identity being neurodevelopmental in origin.
You give throwaway one liners in response to probing questions.
You effectivley suggest that you have studied every single manifestation of transness and determined that is all neurodevelopmental in origin, again without evidence.
You continue to insist that allowing males to access female spaces is the only way to alleviate this condition

This is not the way that scientists interact with each other or with the wider public

This is DARVO - Taztoy is asking about the practical implications of your views. Refusing to engage with the substance of many posters' comments is what you are doing.

Which points to the fundamental issue here.

Even those who are mostly strongly asserting that TWAW know that it's all a pretence.

It's not. Your trauma is equal to the trauma of any other woman, it's just that it's irrelevant in the context of a TIM who wants to expose himself to actual women.

Argh this is exhausting.

The reference to Dr Sacks and his book was simply to illustrate to people the possibilities of diverse and unexpected cognitive experiences underwritten by the physical structures of the brain.

I did this because people regularly insist that being trans is "logically impossible".

I am sharing with you my knowledge. I am trying to explain to you what being trans is - because OP said that nobody can explain it. Actually it is perfectly possible to explain.

As for sharing my own research, of course I can't as it would be outing. If this were a safer space I really would, but given the amount of abuse I get on here, that would be a disaster.

😂
Spot on. It's breathtakingly callous - you have to laugh or you would cry.

DARVO 🙄. Please point me to any abusive remark I've made to another user on this thread.

Anyway, this is going the usual way.

My purpose here was simply to offer you all a coherent and clear explanation of what it is to be trans. This is something that is often declared "impossible". (ie. no one knows what being trans is, no one can explain it).

You won't even say what kind of research it is, though. Just the field and whether you're published would be useful.

Neither you nor Taztoy has been abusive. I said that failing to engage with the substance of her post - how your views fit in with the current law - was DARVO.

You explained it very well. Being “trans” is a simply a delusion that one is a member of the opposite sex.

The reference to Dr Sacks and his book was simply to illustrate to people the possibilities of diverse and unexpected cognitive experiences underwritten by the physical structures of the brain.

But it is a leap to go from there to proving that there is a particular physical structure that explains trans identities.

As for sharing my own research, of course I can't as it would be outing. If this were a safer space I really would, but given the amount of abuse I get on here, that would be a disaster.

It must be very disappointing that nobody else ever refers to your research.

It must be very disappointing that nobody else ever refers to your research.

Indeed, in academia citations are everything

What is the point? I can't convince you on this matter because of my credentials - I'm an anonymous user online. If you want to dismiss what I have to say because you don't believe I know what I'm talking about that's entirely up to you.

All I'm asking you to do is to hear the arguments. Maybe consider them for a minute. Maybe think - ok I don't agree, but I can see how that's logical/ possible. Maybe think, ok that's an idea but I want to see evidence of it (beyond some random anonymous poster on mumsnet) before I believe it, and then go read some stuff. All of those things would be totally valid and a productive outcome of this conversation.

Or you can say - this poster is at best some "postmodern sociologist" writing about robots and post humanism (the sink/cesspit of academia or whatever a pp said 😂) and at worst just a liar, and therefore I'm not interested in what she has to say. And that's fine too! I can't do anything about that.

My purpose here was simply to offer you all a coherent and clear explanation of what it is to be trans.

As @FlirtsWithRhinos says, it is a hypothesis. Nothing more

You have explained that being trans, in your view, is a difference in the brain.

You have agreed that humans cannot change sex.

Given this, I cannot understand why you continue to argue here against single sex spaces.

You have agreed that humans cannot change sex

To be clear I neither agree nor disagree with this statement. I consider it to be an entirely silly/ pointless statement.

It has just occurred to me that the end result of TQ+ ideology's attempts to have gender trump sex is either -

(1) A win for gender ideologues, no more rights based on sex or sexual orientation

or (if we are not careful)

(2) A loss for gender ideologues over the issue of whether gender trumps sex, but leaving us in a position where "transness itself" is not questioned.

In my view (1) is only the first part of the battle.

The second part of the battle is dealing with "transness itself". In my view (and it is hard to know precisely how to deal with it in practical terms) every single trans person requires mental health support to cure them of their wrong-sex delusions, or they need mental health support or criminal sanctions in order to persuade them that their paraphilia should not be taken into public places with non-consenting strangers.

I wonder the extent to which the trans playbook consciously considered that by pushing for the outrageous (and end to sex based rights) they might actually succeed in persuading ordinary people that paraphilias and untreated mental illness are perfectly acceptable things to be allowed to

To be clear - obviously I am not saying that we should lock up people with untreated mental health issues - I am saying that people with mental health issues need to seek and get treatment, and if they don't should be compelled (at least where the mental health issue affects others negatively, which is precisely what men and women in wrong sex spaces or destroying sex based langauge are doing.

That's fine - I totally respect that that would be your conclusion.
All I ask you to do is therefore consider it.

Why is sex silly/pointless?

And Brainworm's explanation/description upthread of it as a deluded belief based on a category error informed by value-laden concepts of maleness and femaleness is much more accurate, comprehensible and credible.

(Hope I've recapped you correctly, Brainworm.)