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.

But you can't have that sort of perception of self in a vacuum. Even if the "this, not that" identification is at a subconscious, not an intellectual level, there has to be a "this" and a "that" to identify with/identify as not being.

Alone, the only "that" is your body, and the only "this" is whatever you experience as the more authentic you.

For that to translate into "not man, but woman" there have to be men and women out there, whom you identify as such. Your identification with one rather than the other may be visceral, subconscious and immediate, but it still involves your perception, not inside knowledge, of those men and women and what they are.

@TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne didn’t plan to come back here, but saw your post and feel I can’t pass without saying how very very sorry I am that this happened to you. Thank you for sharing something so personal. I am saddened not only that you experienced what you did, but that you - like @Taztoy - have felt you had to share it here in order to validate your reasons for wanting single sex spaces. It is like exposing you both to harm all over again.

I send you both the most deep felt hugs in solidarity.

No. I said I have no idea whether Eddie Izzard is trans or not.
i don't know anything about Eddie Izzard's cognitive experience of sex/ gender or what Eddie Izzard has said about that.

But being trans not about your perception of who someone else is.

It's about one's perception of self.

yes in order to label your experience , you need to have language, and language depends on social experience, all children (well the vast majority) acquire this in early childhood.

I really think it's helpful for people to try to stop projecting their own assumptions and logic on this, and actually just read some testimonies from trans people about their experience.

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to respond to that.

Word salad wibble wibble hatstand is your usual.

But don't waste your energy I get the gist.

Once, during a Ricky Gervais podcast, he was so astounded by what had just come out of Karl’s mouth.
Ricky said: you might have well hit a wok for all the sense that made.

Same kinda applies here…

It's a profound, automatic, almost subconscious, pervasive, all consuming direct perception of self - you can listen/ read the so, so many, many different ways that trans people have described this.

The stories people tell themselves about themselves are not in any way a good indication of reality. Humans are extraordinarily gifted at lying to themselves. Deep convictions, subconscious and all.

Someone who is not a woman saying they "experience life as a woman" is about as meaningful as someone saying they've experienced God or an anorexic saying they experience themselves as fat. What do those words even mean to them? In their own words, the story almost universally starts with stereotypes. Now on that one, I'm inclined to believe them.

Thank you

No it has nothing to do with stereoptypes.

It's about one's perception of self.

You seem to have some kind of mystic concept of self. Your self is you, mind and body. Just because it's you doesn't mean you're not capable of being mistaken about yourself. Indeed, people are commonly much more able to be objective about other people than their selves.

So how do they 'feel' like women?

No it has nothing to do with stereoptypes.

In their own words it does. You said we should listen to how trans people describe experiencing dysphoria.

People's perceptions of themselves are frequently wrong. People often think they are a lot smarter, kinder, funnier, etc, etc than they actually are.

Oh you may not have used those exact words but are you denying saying no women have a right to single sex changing rooms or toilet because I can assure you you did. Or stating that neither trans women or people with XY DSD should be excluded from womens sports and you don't believe in sex testing in sport?

Even with Mumnets poor search I will be able to find and prove that you very much have said that. So no changing rooms, no toilets, no sports, no upsetting Dr Upton by asking for a female Doctor so exactly what do you think women are allowed to exclude men from?

It must be about the perception of others, because other people are male and female.

In your hat example, the man has to have a perception of what a hat is to judge his wife to be a hat.

I really think it's helpful for people to try to stop projecting their own assumptions and logic on this, and actually just read some testimonies from trans people about their experience.

I have. This man for instance

https://substack.com/home/post/p-163752512

"I live liminally, gender-wise, but in Britain I usually present feminine."

"If I am presenting male, that means using male or gender-neutral toilets. But for over a decade now, when I am presenting femme with my friends then I go with them to the toilets. Not out of genuine fear of violence, but more as an escape from the smirks and side-eye I’d experienced in men’s toilets in the past."

Or the aforementioned Eddie Izzard

"I go in girl mode or boy mode, which I see as a superhero thing."

"I am gender fluid, I do seem to be a mixture, but I'm now based in girl mode as a trans woman."

I think it's your perception of trans people that is rather narrow.

The sound bite ‘you’ve been sharing single sex spaces with male people with transgender identity for years’ is not a clever gotcha at all.

It really shows a lack of empathy for women and girls who have had their consent overridden. It supports the removal of consent for female people.

“If they don’t know, it won’t hurt them.“

Even on an instinctive, non-verbal level, nobody perceives and understands their self without any reference to the world around them and how they perceive it. How could they? They'd have no terms of reference at all. Not even "I" and "not I".

You can't take a couple of quotes like this and make assumptions about someone's experience.
You would need a much more in-depth conversation with the person to understand, not a couple of disembodied sentences.

Sorry I meant to quote @nicepotoftea

Well to some extent it is true “If they [genuinely] don’t know, it won’t hurt them.“

Until, of course, it does hurt them, which causes them to know.

And of course "they know" is close to 100%, whereas TIMs seem to think that if a woman hasn't made an aggressive fuss like he would if he were challenged, then they can't have been clocked.

And, of course, as Gisele Pelicot's case reminds us, what those 51 men did was 100% wrong, even if there were no STDs or other physical harms, and even if she'd never found out.

Thank you. I do understand the sentiment and you expressed it perfectly.

I don't know how many more ways to try and explain this- it's not about being "right" or "wrong". It's just about what is.

Translation : "Even I cannot waffle my way out of this one, so I'll bring up hours of hypothetical conversation that will - of course - reveal the only evidence we do have of their beliefs to be a complete lie"

I doubt that her mother has been sharing public toilets with transwomen all her life. It's easy to clock most transwomen and, until recently, very few were in women's public toilets unless you went to gay clubs. I was raped and sexually abused in public toilets so men, including transwomen, there trigger me. But encountering transwomen there has only been a problem recently.

I'm advocating for women's toilets that trans women can also use.

Are you talking about transwomen using gender neutral toilets and not using women's single sex toilets? Bc many women can't use public toilets if transwomen use them. If GN for transwomen (+ SS for women who want that) is what you mean, I think many here would agree. I would prefer that transwomen have gender neutral facilities that are in addition to women's single sex facilities wherever practicable.

If you're talking about transwomen using women's single sex toilets, what do you think should happen for the women who can't or don't want to share public loos or other services/facilities with transwomen?