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.

__
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.
_

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.

_

@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.

Could you suggest 2 or 3 journals please; I work in a university so get free access.

Empirical work = lived experience

but in controlled circumstances with placebos and double blind trials, otherwise any reports are worthless

In all my dealings with academics, scientists and social scientists, I've never met one who wouldn't provide at least 3 key studies as a starting point.

All the reading is done before your hypothesis. It informs your hypothesis surely?

3 studies. I'll give it a go. Here is the first.

Olson, Kristina R, Aidan C Key, and Nicholas R Eaton. “Gender Cognition in Transgender Children.” Psychological science 26.4 (2015): 467–474. Web.

Yes of course. I didn't start out knowing any of the things I know. What I saying is that you can read almost any empirical study on this subject and find it is consistent with/ support what I am trying to explain/ share with you on this thread.

Tandora can't even come up with any of the criteria that leads a man to believe he's a woman, despite studying it for 20 years and it being a 'pervasive, profound and unrelenting' state of mind.

I wonder if it's because Tandora suddenly realised that no matter what they said, the sexism would be undeniable.

Not to mention driving a tank through the whole 'this is so academic and sciency'.

Tandora

Aside from the type of body one subjectively expects to see when one looks down, do you believe trans women are more like women than other men are in other ways or not?

And if you do, in what ways?

This incidentally is absolutely part of my asking you what "trans" means in your view, and has been part of my question right from the start. Is it a mismatch whereby the mind believes it has a different body, or is it because the mind has characteristics of the opposite sex that exist apart from and independant of the sexed body.

I am trying to understand whether there is anything meaningful to womanhood - something connecting trans women to the lives and experiences of actual women - in your biochmeical hypothesis, or if your belief that we should treat trans women as women is simply down to believing it is humane to make men living with a biochemically messed up body map comfortable if we can.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30247609/

I hope one of these studies is going to explain why everyone under the trans umbrella is covered

Polderman, Tinca J. C et al. “The Biological Contributions to Gender Identity and Gender Diversity: Bringing Data to the Table.” Behavior genetics 48.2 (2018): 95–108. Web.

Yes, please explain where people who describe themselves as non-binary or gender fluid fit into your hypothesis, and how they are different to people who would describe themselves as gender non-conforming, but not trans. This just seems like people defining their own identity differently depending on their perception of what it means to be gender conforming. Would you assume that each group had a different brain structure?

How do you control for societal and familial influence?

How do you control for paraphilia?

In particular can you explain the rapid and disproportionate increase in referrals of young girls to gender clinics over the last few years?

One of those is quick and easy - being gender non-conforming is not the same as being trans. Gender non-conforming is a much wider bucket.

What's the difference?

But you aren't really sharing anything.

All you have said is that you believe it's biochemical, because we know the mind can sometimes misfire due to injury, birth defect or chemical imbalance.

You have hypothesised that there is some sort of body map rolodex in the human genome with maps of both sexes and in the case of trans people it got opened on the wrong page.

You have not said why this faulty rolodex should be been as socially and legally significant than a person's actual sex. Why someone's faulty map should be taken as a true map by everyone else.

You have not engaged with the absolute basic level of scentific method which is to look at the things that appear to disprove your hypothesis and either show that they are not in fact incompatible, or adjust your hypothesis to allow for them and in doing do make it better.

In short, you keep, deliberately or not, missing the point. The point is not "can we imagine that their could be a mental body map that goes wrong?" - of course we can.

The point is "Does a wrong mental body map justify including male bodied people in our legal or social idea of women, or jusify what is being demanded of women in its name?"

I say no. If you disgree, make arguments for it!

Well being trans is as per all my posts on this thread.

Gender non-conforming is completely different. Gender non-conforming is anyone whose appearance/ behaviour doesn't conform to prevailing expectations/ assumptions/ stereotypes associated with their sex. So for example a boy who insists on only wearing dresses could be described as gender non-conforming. That doesn't mean that boy is trans (recognises/ understands himself to be female).

It is staggeringly simple that anyone who advocates for mixed sex spaces is (inadvertently perhaps) advocating for more women to be sexuially assaulted by men, which would not have happened had they chosen the women's space.

Naive women, virtue signalling women and stupid women have as much right to safety from men as any other woman.

I would still like to know why tandora thinks it's even relevant if there's a biological underpinning to gender dysphoria.

Given male and female are body categories not brain categories, why would having a particular brain condition mean male people should be categorised together with female people who don't have that same brain condition? What properties do members of the combined category share? Why is it useful?

And then why is it so much more useful than the existing meaning that was created to refer to the bodily differences that it should be permitted to steal the terms and appropriate physical accommodations that were created based on women's different physical bodies.

I'm just rephrasing OP's original question really. We've made some small progress in establishing tandora thinks there is a brain structural or hormonal difference causing some men to believe they are women. For me I'm not that interested in chasing up the evidence for that - I don't think it's currently conclusive either way, but perfectly willing to hypothesise that it may be there.

It is an interesting side question as to whether, if such a hormonal difference could be isolated and there was say a cheek swab test for that, would tandora be happy to say everyone failing that test is not trans and is either mistaken or lying.

Saying 'they are different' doesn't answer my question. What is the the difference between being gender non-conforming and identifying as non-binary and being gender non-conforming and thinking that gender is a load of old tosh? These different points of view depend on different understandings of the external environment and other people, and specifically gender identity.

How do you disentangle the cultural belief that it is necessary to define a gender identity and that this must depend on comparison with others, from investigation of physiology and brain structure?

I'd be interested in asking you all a question. I know many are familiar with this very famous article in Nature:

Ainsworth C. Sex redefined. Nature. 2015 Feb 19;518(7539):288-91. doi: 10.1038/518288a. PMID: 25693544.

But there this is this idea that this article has been systematically debunked. Be very interested to hear your thoughts on that - why you find it so unconvincing.

I don't think I understand this question sorry..

The concept of gender identity depends on comparison with others.

Many people don't believe they have a masculine or feminine gender identity, and some of those people identify as non-binary (trans) and some of those people (e.g. gender critical feminists) just don't believe anyone's identity is simply feminine or masculine, and that the attempt to do so is sexist.

The first group of people identify as trans, but the difference is semantics, not physiology.

Are you saying that people who describe themselves as non-binary are not trans?

And, follow up question, are you also arguing that people who do not suffer from gender dysphoria are not trans?

There's nothing wrong with that article, except for the way it gets misused by TRAs, particularly the last sentence. The article describes the sex binary in terms of fœtal development, and how people with DSDs can end up with a mixture of the characteristics associated with the two normal development pathways. Rarely, they may need to make a decision between masculinising and feminising treatment, for which their personal preference is taken into account. This is the only time it is relevant, applicable to less than 0.018% of population.

Well, for a start, the article seems to misunderstand the meaning of 'spectrum' and 'sex'.