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.

if I’d have been drugged when that man raped me and sexually assaulted me by penetration, would it have been rape? I wouldn’t have known. So if he hadn’t have recorded it as was done to Gisele Pelicot then would it have been rape?

It seems possibly not according to the “you have been doing it and didn’t know” logic.

Gender neutral spaces are available for everyone. I'm advocating for women's toilets that trans women can also use. Not toilets available for everyone

You are advocating for mixed sex toilets because, as as matter of law, it's not possible to excluded only some men or only some women. It's all or nothing.

As a survivor of rape I find this an absurd analogy.

Rape is an extreme and violent violation of a person and a criminal offence .
Using a public toilet is not . however much you would like it to be.

This.

And that would mean I couldn’t leave my home. Unless I was sure I wouldn’t need the toilet.

I've asked this loads, but exactly what would that constitute? What would a man be feeling to think that he's a woman???

I don't expect you to answer, by the way

Correction, you might answer, but it will be bollocks.

*I don't expect you to answer, by the way

Correction, you might answer, but it will be bollocks.*

Then why are people engaging with me? I obviously can't win what is the point.

You’re entitled to disagree. For me, it’s a consent issue and your argument of “well it’s been happening and you didn’t know” is a rape apology argument as it excuses certain types Of rape.

Also. You’ve just shown that you have not read and understood any of my posts that have described the trauma I feel when I am in behind a closed door alone with a man on the other side.

Which is disappointing.

Complete and utter nonsense. Her mother has NOT been sharing toilets, changing rooms or any other single sex space all her life with these men. But a brilliant example of the countless lies that this ideology is based on and how they're used to gaslight the population into believing fantasies and denying the reality of what they see and know.

Older women (and I am one ) know that this is a recent phenomenon driven by a porn soaked culture along with social contagion via social media targeting the young and vulnerable who lack the maturity and wisdom to understand precisely what is being sold to them by dodgy transactivists.

The number of transvestites and cross dressers decades ago were a tiny minority - and I'm one of those older lesbians who shared toilets with that group of men in the gay clubs, hidden away in big cities and so often raided by the police. Outside of gay clubs, transwomen were NOT in any women's toilets, hospital wards, sport etc in any numbers at all. The majority of women would never have faced the intrusion of these men into safe single sex spaces - until the last decade or so.

Every time you unpick the grandiose pronouncements of transactvists, you find untruths, fantasies and delusions. Fine for individuals if that's how they choose to live their lives. But completely unacceptable in trying to influence societal behaviour, children and the law.

If 0.5% of men would be severely distressed by being excluded from women-only services;

But 80% of British people think they should be;

And a lot more than 0.5% of women would be severely distressed by the 0.5% being included in women-only services, to the extent that they themselves will avoid using them, and be left without provision;

Then it doesn't matter whether they're genuine, or 'at it', or more, or less, dangerous, than other men.

The only question is why the 99.5% have to adapt their expectations, and not the 0.5%?

i don't have a problem with sex based protections in law. I have a problem with the introduction of policies that are making it impossible for trans people to participate in public life/ leave their homes

im struggling to square these 2 statements. Sex based laws are ok but you also think having policies that translate that law into action like for example single sex changing rooms make it impossible for trans ppl to participate or public life?

If I took great objection to my partner washing my coffee mug, and he said "but I've been doing it for the last 5 years!" , would you call him a rape apologist? No. Thought not.

For the comparison to hold you would have to share a view that the action was comparable to rape: using a public toilet is not.

It's not a criminal offence to use a public toilet, however much you would want it to be.

Because what you say doesn't make sense.

You know people don't change sex. You believe in sex. You don't object to single sex facilities for actual women.

But you think tw should be able to use them, which means they're not single sex any more, they're mixed sex.

"Gender neutral spaces are available for everyone. I'm advocating for women's toilets that trans women can also use. Not toilets available for everyone ."

You are advocating for this for one or both of two reasons. First because you think that a female identified trans person would be "outed" when they don't want to be by using a neutral loo. This is laudable but it ignores the desire of women not to share spaces with people that they can tell, or think they can tell, have a penis. It removes their right to challenge anyone who they think should not be in a female only space. (I'm tall with short hair and broad shoulders. I've often been challenged over decades and I don't mind at all. )

The other reason seems more prevalent among the trans activists, who are already obviously out, perhaps because they shout so loud. That is to force society to acknowledge that they have changed sex. This reason is not acceptable to those, the vast majority, who believe that sex cannot be charged.

Are you advocating for both? And if the first, why do you advocate for that right over women's rights?
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I think you might be confusing 'washing a coffee cup' with 'using a space from from which you should have expect to be excluded without permission'.

He should stop the minute you tell him to not do it any more. He shouldn’t find excuses to continue to do it. And he most definitely shouldn’t have been doing something he knew he had no right to in the first place.

I do not consent to men in women’s SSS.

In the U.K., the law agrees.

The answer isn’t for men to force their way in where they aren’t allowed. Coz that is a slippery slope to rape apology.

For the not-first time, directing a glib and patronising comment like that to a rape survivor who has posted extensively about her lasting trauma is the act of either a truly shitty human being or one with something seriously wrong with their empathy chip.

IMO, anyway.

If I took great objection to my partner washing my coffee mug, and he said "but I've been doing it for the last 5 years!" , would you call him a rape apologist? No. Thought not.

This isn't about your partner, is it? It's about random people you don't know.

If you found me washing your coffee mug, would you accept "but I've been doing it for the last 5 years" as a mitigation?

THIS.

The willingness of transactivists to dismiss the trauma of women and girls in their desperation to wedge men into spaces where women and girls undress or are vulnerable knows no bounds.

And so often shows everyone precisely what their values are. And they're never women / safeguarding centred.

Sneaky edit there.

I never said it was a criminal offence.

I explained exactly what I’d do.

It is a breach of the law for a service provider to allow a trans woman into a woman’s single sex space. I would report the organisation, report the trans woman to the organisation and expect the organisation to remove them and if the trans woman did it twice I’d report them to the police for harassment.

As you think they should be in there every time they need to wee, I don’t think it would take too long for it to reach harassment standards under law.

If you found me washing your coffee mug, would you accept "but I've been doing it for the last 5 years" as a mitigation?

Trespass isn't a criminal offence, so presumably it would be OK?

Maybe I could come in the house and sleep in the bed when tandora isn’t there and she wouldn’t know I’d done it I’d leave everything as it was. Sure what would be the harm.

So you’re denying Eddie is trans even though he claims he is? That’s rather transphobic don’t you think?

You’re expecting reason and logic from a TRA?

It's a form of the 'six why' or fishbone technique I think. You keep asking until it's really blatantly obvious to the lurkers that the only priority is men getting what they want.

Doesn't take long, either.