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.

The flaw in this logic is that no one needs to redefine sexual attraction for gayness to be real. All we needed to do was recognise the same attraction could exist between people of the same sex.

But for trans to be "real" (as in not a delusion that is real to the sufferer but in reality caused by a cognitive misfire that leads them to misperceive reality, but an actual objective reality that makes the trans person objectively the opposite sex due to meaningful commonalities with others of that sex) we have to redefine sex for everyone.

That is why the "ooooh but people used to say being gay was a delusion/sickness" gotcha is false. Because accepting gayness was real expression of sexuality simply meant not pathologising an observeable phenomenon, while accepting transness is a real expression of sex means entirely undefining sex as we know it and replacing it with a totally different concept.

Without clarifying anything

how completely and utterly astonishing

heaven knows why after all these years I still expect anyone who believes this nonsense to be able to properly explain themselves

No there isn't.

Thats complete fabrication

Hunger means something physically real and demonstrable.

Right and being trans is also physical, real and demonstrable.

if you ignore your hunger to be a member of the opposite sex for a long time, what real physical impacts will there be?

The impacts can include severe depression, anxiety disorder, severe mood dysregulation , body dysmorphia, eating disorders, self-harm, suicidality and even psychosis induced by chronic experiences of disassociation.

Right really do have to go.

So the idea of profound, pervasive, persistent is not needed?

Just - do you think you are a different sex to the one you are.

What are the physical markers of being 'trans'?

Given that this seems to exclude poor Alex who I linked to above, and many people in the trans community, that definition is far too narrow, and again does call into question your knowledge of the subject.

Oh Lord! You studied it for 20 years and heard all the stories, but it's just like being hungry!

Hunger is lack of food. It's completely describable, measurable, verifiable.

Yet again, this just boils down to feelings. I feel like I'm a woman, based on fuck all.

They don't have a single feeling that is sex specific to women, but still manage to feel like one.

Even to you, Tandora, this must sound like absolute drivel.

The definition of a woman, is not 'a man who says he feels like one'. 😁

Personally, I'd ask for my money back for those two decades.

Then that needs mental health treatment not affirmation.

@Tandora Right, and there's similar evidence that transness has hormonal underpinnings.

I've been having a look at the literature. There is nothing definitive. One study finds something. Another study contradicts it. One study looked quite hopeful, but tucked away was the information that we grouped both hormone-naïve and treated transmen together for data analysis.
There is a lot of noise, but not much signal.

Don't waste your time people. @FlirtsWithRhinos questions are still being deliberately ignored. Tandora is trolling us. I'm off for a walk😁

We treat delusions as the falsities that they are. We don’t pander to delusions that attempt to uproot society.

Do you think that the AGPs who invade female single sex spaces should be locked up or otherwise punished? A man in the Ladies because he gets a sexual thrill out of dressing up like a prostitute doesn’t seem to figure in your “trans” umbrella which only includes those who are suffering from a delusion that they belong to the opposite sex.

That's what people used to say about same-sex attraction. Until they realised:

1. those "mental health treatments" didn't "cure" someone of being gay,
2. those "mental health treatments" compounded the individual's distress and trauma.
3. It was actually totally fine to just allow people to be gay.

I'll let you join the dots...

It really is.

Do you know that even though you are of the sex that produces sperm, you are of the sex that produces eggs?

Hunger is caused by the hormones Ghrelin, Leptin, Insulin (and a few others) interacting on the body in various ways.

What specific hormones cause someone to be trans?

Dementia patients and people with frontal lobe injuries can become verbally or sexually agressive due to cognitive changes in their brain.

As far as they are concerned their interpretations of and reactions to events are entirely justified. That is their reality and they can become very distressed when it is contradicted.

And yet, we understand that these people's reality cannot be accomodated even though this causes them distress because of the negative impacts on others.

Depressed, anxious, moody, self harming, suicidal and psychotic - exactly the sort of man I want in my toilets.

You still haven’t clarified what happens if I join your dots

do I have to use wrong sex pronouns?
do I have to compromise my privacy by sharing women’s spaces with ‘transwomen’?

But the difference is that being trans doesn't cause someone to be verbally and physically aggressive.

Someone else being trans does not negatively impact you. You just think it does because you're very transphobic.

Sorry to be blunt but this is the bottom line.

Ah it's but it's not at all. And that's what I am here to demonstrate.

Well I wish you'd get on with it then.

Thread after thread of promises. Yet Tandora never delivers.

I've got things to do. Tell us, how do transwomen define transness?

Maybe it's because, in the last century, surgical and hormonal 'transition' became possible and, up to a point, improved over time. Irrespective of motivation, if something can be done, some people will go right on ahead and do it.

But self mutilation, and flagrant abuse of societal sex norms, are such extreme and disadvantageous behaviour, that it had to be interpreted as a condition - a sort of DSD of the mind, if you will.

And now we've made laws to protect them, which (also) cover erotic cross-dressers, predators, and people with (other) issues, such as mental illness, neurodiversity, and societal homophobia. And the laws aren't even conditional on medical treatment any more.

What a mess!

@Tandora , as any discussion requires a baseline, if I were to say 'I do understand what you are saying trans is' (ie yes, I understand the words, and on the assumption you are in good faith, I understand what you believe the conclusion to that meaning is: namely rhat society must change to help these people), I would be interested to see the leap from that to 'therefore trans-identified males should be in female (specifically, female) spaces'.
So just to be very clear, the premise, which I will accept for the sake or argument, is that trans is very real, the males who are trans are that way due to a physiological, neurological or psychological diversity, and they are very vulnerable and require access to different spaces from those used by 'cis' males.
Why do the trans-identified males need female spaces? Instead of third/fourth etc spaces?

You know, because we've been over this a million times, that this is not at all comparable with people being gay. People being gay asks nothing of others to accommodate.

Now, can you get back to telling us about the physical markers of being trans and the specific hormones involved?

It's fine to allow people to be trans as long as they can be accomodated as their actual sex. No issues at all there.

It is not fine to accomodate trans people by treating them as the opposite sex because that negatively impacts other people.

Simple.

What makes a person trans is to have an profound/ pervasive/ persistent understanding/ knowledge/ recognition of self as being other than the sex one was observed to be at birth.

What makes a person Napoleon is to have a profound, pervasive, persistent understanding, knowledge and recognition of themselves as being Napoleon.