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.

Oh sure, obviously it's possible to be accomodated if you override the needs, interests, voices and experiences of the actual opposite sex to avoid the cognitive dissonance of everyone knowing you are not actually the opposite sex.

Which is what it boils down to for you isn't it. Women can go to hell for all you care as long as trans people are accomodated.

No

What you demand is not reasonable. If trans people cannot be accomodated in ways that do not require other marginalised groups to deny their own needs, prioritise and self knowledge, then this neurodiversity is too extreme to accomodate in that why and must instead be managed to minise distress without disadvantaging others.

Look. I long ago accepted that you say that trans is a feeling inside some people that they feel like the opposite sex to that which they were born.

im not arguing that. Not at all.

ok so they feel like the opposite sex.

but it is unlawful to allow them into the single sex space of anything other than the sex which they were born. Because sex is the way in which the law is worded.

Why can’t trans people use a unisex space? Why is the answer to accommodate them in a single sex space to which they are not entitled and which will drive out many many more numbers of women than the trans women who it will admit? Why is that ok?

My trauma isn’t something that comes from within me. It comes from what a man did and as a result I am afraid of being in a toilet behind a closed door with a man on the other side of that door. I’m afraid of being in a room alone with a man I don’t know very well. I’m afraid that when I go to group counselling there will be a man there who identifies as a trans woman.

Why is the only answer complete acceptance? What is wrong with a fourth space?

Adjustments for disability, for example, have to be reasonable.

leaving aside the law as it currently is, I do not believe it is a reasonable accommodation to force many more women to stay out of their lawful single sex space so as to accommodate a very much smaller number of trans women.

I don’t accept that their trauma is worse than mine and that they must be accommodated to my detriment.

and the law agrees so it’s a moot point anyway.

Oh good god, I am slightly losing patience. Gay people's rights did not impinge in the slightest on straight, or bi, people's rights. Yes, some very religious people may have been upset, but no one has a right to have everyone else agree with their religion and we don't live in a theocracy, so the balancing of gay rights versus a bit of religious upset to a minority was easy to do.
If trans-identified males claim female rights/spaces, this means that females then don't have specifically female rights/spaces. So trans-identified males then have the following rights:
1.the same human rights as everyone else

1. Extra rights under the EA on the basis of gender re-assignment
2. Extra rights under the EA on the basis of being of the female sex even though they are of the male sex.

This is not at all equivalent to gay rights. Quite the opposite.

Aah, in the same way that the empirical reality of physical sex led us to coin the words men and women?

And the way the existence of different social and physical consequences depending on ones physical sex led us to create women's spaces, rights and protections for the people with the physical sex of woman?

Something like that?

It's the existence/ empirical reality of transness as a neurological condition that has led people to study and learn about it.

Is it?
Says who?

And [even if there is] "what do you say to the 50% (75%? 95%?) of trans people and trans activists who would decry you as the most disgusting transphobe based on your medical gatekeeping, and what is the name for all the people who claim to be trans but aren't?"

And "how do we tell the real men pretending to be women from the men pretending to pretend to be women?"

Yeah. And those are all valid points you have not addressed.

It's the existence of AGP men enjoying a boner that has led to hundreds of them writing reams about it.

I bet they have profound, pervasive and, from what I can gather, totally unrelenting feelings, too.

It's hardly leverage.

Perhaps I should take a leaf out of the TRA book when dealing with my neurodiverse DC's school.
There I am, accepting extra time and rest breaks as 'reasonable adjustments' in exams when what I should be demanding is that DC is given A*s without having to take the exams at all. I mean, I know the rest of the 6th form would think it was really unfair, but the thing is, DC is extremely bright and academic; and DC and I know this, so UCAS and the exam boards should accommodate it entirely.

Interestingly I read an article on trans patients with dementia - deeply distressed elderly people who have apparently forgotten their supposedly profound, pervasive and persistent understanding of themselves prior to surgery and wake up every day in horror that their body has been deformed without their knowledge or consent. Every day they go through the trauma of discovering they have no penis and have breast implants and being called by a name they do not recognise. I understand it is harrowing for the patient, their families and staff in residential care homes as a result.

I haven't been indoctrinated by social media that people can't change sex! 🤣🤣🤣

You don't think that telling children that it is possible to 'be born in the wrong body' might lead to some of them believing it about themselves?

Making this all about 'neurological pathways' is nonsense.

People are studying it because it's currently worth money to do so and anything that 'affirms' will earn a mint.

I must say this thread has been excellent. The clarity and precision of the arguments have been very impressive - well on one side anyway - and have really got to the root of it. I think this should be our new Break it down for me thread and we should signpost new MNers to it.

I haven't seen a starker illustration of the nature of this entire clash of rights in a long time, and I've been here for a about a decade.

Thanks to the very articulate and sharp posters here. You know who you are.

Oh and all the comparisons with autism / ADHD have not gone unnoticed.

There will be a push for trans to be recognised as a disability next.

It is possible to be accommodated in society as the sex other than your birth sex.

I think you are getting confused here. In many situations sex isn't relevant, so it isn't necessary for society to do anything, and it is actually unlawful discrimination to treat somebody differently because of their sex. We are discussing situations where discrimination is lawful because sex is relevant. It is not within anyone's gift to ignore the consequences of sex - their own or anyone else's.

If this weren't possible you wouldn't be so wound up about it.

I'm not really sure what you mean here. The Supreme Court has ruled that it isn't possible, largely because what you are suggesting doesn't make sense. Again, your limited understanding of this issue calls into question your claims of expertise.

It's like saying, be gay but never act on it and calling that "accommodation" and acceptance.

I can only say again what I said before. It is physically possible to have sex with somebody of the same sex, but it is not possible to change sex. Miracles aside, the church has no control over this.

Posts don’t get deleted for ‘pointing out inconsistencies’. This poster repeatedly attacks @Tandora resorting to name calling and aggressive insults.

You know this perfectly well. You’re just being obtuse, which seems to be very on brand for you.

This is it, we're back to handwaving away the distress of women like Taztoy and saying it doesn't exist again. Or it only exists because she's transphobic and therefore her views don't count.

Trauma and cPTSD don't react to what someone else knows inside their head, they react to what the sufferer perceives in front of them, and it is not transphobic to expect that to be taken into account when considering how society should accommodate trans people and victims of sexual assault/rape.

It really isn’t

I’ve got no problem with people ‘being Trans’, be trans all day long

I’m just not prepared to compromise my safety, privacy or dignity by sharing single sex spaces with men, or to lie about my perception by using wrong sex pronouns

Is that not a personal attack?

This thread has really made me understand how academia has been so captured, so much theory, so much dancing on the head of a pin with next to no thought or understanding of the real life impact it has

I also understand Tandora better now that I realise their definition of trans is so incredibly narrow but again with no real understanding of how transphobic that makes them to TRA

very enlightening all round

You can certainly study the idea that transness might be a neurological condition for some people, but if you want to generalise that to all trans people, you also have to include the large number of people who identify as trans simply because they like the community and feel an affinity with a particular gender, and the fathers of 4 who one day decide they want to take their enjoyment of dressing as women public. You will end up by excluding large numbers of people who are currently identify as trans.

Leaving aside whether they should or shouldn't be accommodated in opposite sex spaces, if your contention is that only people with a neurological condition are trans and should be accommodated in opposite sex spaces, then, as you have pointed out, that presents a problem because we have no way of knowing who has a neurological condition.

And that's before you get onto people who don't identify as male or female (and whose needs you seem to be ignoring).

There is just no way to reliably allocate services according to gender identity. The only choices are mixed sex and single sex, hence the Supreme Court decision.

What has been most eye opening for me here, is seeing how Tandora wants to work with (pretty vague) theoretical constructs, with no interest at all in how they translate into people's realities. Even for the so called trans people themselves.

That seems to stack up with their claim to be in academia.

And tells us everything we need to know about how this utter mess came about.

And if you had read, digested, and understood a single thing that @Taztoy and @TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne and others have said about being survivors you would understand why what you say is a completely nonsensical thing to say. But you refuse to acknowledge that accommodating trans women as women does actually demonstrable harm to women.

i guess it will be pretty hard to face up to the fact that decades of research work has been built on foundations on sand, but that's life sometimes.

Like that Doctor in the states who spent his career promoting lobotomies and then, as the evidence of harm mounted, literally could not let his position go.

And part of how society should be responding to the problem of VAWG is with safeguarding measures that make it less likely to occur in the first place. Single sex provisions won't cure the problem but they are still a vital line of defence. We know this. The importance of women's prisons, women's toilets, women's sports. These are arguments that have already been won, decades and centuries ago. Elizabeth Fry must be rolling in her grave (just one example).

It is absolutely outrageous that women have been put under so much pressure that they feel the need to justify their rights by disclosing their private business. Women matter, full stop.