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.

If I'd spent 'decades' as a 'scientist' researching all things trans, I'd:

• have a heck of a lot of recent, peer reviewed research ready to go, rather than turning up a few old, googleable & flawed pub meds when pushed into a corner
• be out & proud with my name, credentials & reputation - why not? It's not the GC posters who make death threats, rape threats, or get people arrested or fired
• have answers for the posters who say 'OK, you say being trans is blahblahblah, noted, still wanting WSSS, & the law says we have them, so what adjustments would be realistic for the people you claim to advocate for?'
• wouldn't have hopscotched from discredited views on DSDs to cognition theory to wherever this nonsense is going next, whilst ignoring PP reminding them of previously abandoned positions.

I don't think Tandora is any sort of scientist. I get the impression that Tandora has pressing personal reasons for the obsessive, inconsistent & incoherent circular arguments that they post on here.

If I had to take a wild guess at T's motivation, I'd be thinking that there's a trans identified love interest in the mix here.

There is no logical basis (or evidence base) for believing a man with predatory intentions would pretend to be trans to access these facilities. Why?

By your definitions, men I know are pretending to be trans and entering womens spaces.

Lots of trans people are fully aware of their sex and do not claim to be the opposite sex. Yet claim to be trans, one i know has a GRC.

So either your definition is correct, and men do pretend to be trans to access, amongst other things, these facilities, or your definition of trans is incorrect.

*Biological sex is a multidimensional variable with various components" - Discuss 1000 replies
dunBle · 23/07/2025 00:12

To save further derailment of the Sandie Peggie tribunal threads with people debating Tandora's statements on the above theme, I've started this thread to point them to instead.*

There were a couple of threads devoted to Tandora's multidimensionality believe. But that was July, the sun was shining, the world was a different place.

@FlirtsWithRhinos

Tandy also started a thread to persuade us all that women's sports should be abandoned and 'other categories' should be used instead (unsurprisingly with no fucking idea what these categories should be). But that under no circumstances should trans women or men with DSDs be identified or excluded from competing against women. She isn't a harmless idiot, she is a dangerous one.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Some lightbulb moments for me:
Hounding women out of their jobs for saying sex matters.

The venomous sexual filth in the responses to JKR's very temperate essay. And the intimidating and disgusting nature of some TRA protests.

"Reframe your trauma" . And when it emerged that some ERCC staff were not merely refusing to provide same-sex services themselves, but deliberately not mentioning that those services could be had in the same town at Beira's Place.

Notices in toilets saying that if a transwomen comes in, it is transphobic to leave. And Upton already making little notes about Sandie Peggie for waiting outside the changing room instead of coming in.

Ex-Stonewall person - of ALL people - (Nancy Kelley?) telling gay and lesbian people that if they behave like actual gays and lesbians they are like racists.

All of which made it clear that it's not just about vulnerable harmless people needing somewhere to be safe and pee. It's about enforced participation and punishing dissent.

Of course people are at liberty to change their views and form new opinions and take new information on board but Tandy claims to be an expert with decades of research behind her who has previously started threads with the express intent of educating us thickos /bigots as to why we are wrong so it seems a little odd that the thrust of her argument has changed so far so fast (I'm referring to views sorry scientific facts she presented way back in the late summer but she can't point to any new evidence that has prompting her change of opinion over the course of a couple of months).

Just spitballing here…even though there are only two sexes and all rationale and logician people understand this, why not create a third category specifically for trans people. That way there are SSS for women, men, and the third category of trans? Seems like a sensible solution.

However I have a feeling trans people would outright reject that sensible idea because the whole point for them, particularly TIMs, is to have women be forced to validate their delusions.

Thanks for that insight. That was certainly honest of them. Did you reply at all?

Wow - I stand corrected. I have been giving Tandora far more credit than she desrves.

Ahh yes. I remember. And also the ‘
social sex theory.

Quite a significant number of these theories all rely on future discoveries that will give conclusive evidenced foundations to theories. Plus, of course, this future evidence must also cover all the people who say they are transgender. These theories relying on future discoveries are not meaningful for making policy and laws, yet, they are used to support today’s policies and laws.

If it helps, BH was the constellation of data points. And then there was a new theory later.

The prejudice and intolerance displayed there is jaw dropping. Racist, religious intolerance, cultural prejudice, misogyny.... we'll add that to the ageism and homophobia shall we? 'Inclusive' - no. Not at all. Just identifies as. The word is another bearded man in a tutu snarling at you to say he's a woman and to submit to him and prove it by doing something you would never be expected to do in front of a man.

If we're talking about 'too expensive' to meet the needs of 'niche' groups... <deep breath> and are making decisions socially on that basis then fine, there's a damn sight more women with need for single sex spaces than there are men with gender identities. Obviously. That's that problem solved.

I'm not serious; I'm angry and disgusted, but I do actually believe in the value of equality and inclusion, with that meaning all. Everyone. People I don't like, people I don't agree with, people who don't vote like me, people behaving like absolute arses whose views I find repulsive. Quite apart from that as a moral standpoint for a civilisation worth having, the opposite is insanity. Because sooner or later another group will be popular and the persecutors will become the persecuted.

These theories relying on future discoveries are not meaningful for making policy and laws, yet, they are used to support today’s policies and laws.

We've never had clarity on people like for example White, who identified onto a women's mental health ward and multiply raped a woman for hours, leaving her severely injured, Bryson, Dolotowski, many others... Sturgeon tried to allocate them another gender, 'rapist gender' I think. They're disowned normally, but they were as much men with gender identities as any other man when they were let into a women's space to enjoy themselves.

What are these future discoveries going to do about men like these in women's spaces and the victims they leave strewn behind them?

That's terrifying - but (terrifyingly), not surprising.

This is the thing. And I have asked people before how this works and never get a coherent answer. Because, the concept that they are supporting is not coherent for the application of the theory.

What happens to all those people who are found to be ‘not’ having the diagnosable finding but who have said they are the opposite sex, and even have extreme body modification to fit their belief ? Are those people simply dumped from the transgender category?

When society has been coercively conditioned that ‘trans people are who they say they are’, who the fuck is about to then believe this new finding if it ever eventuates at all? Considering the poor quality of research in this field at the moment, society should rightfully be treating any theory based on some elusive future finding with scepticism until it is shown repeatedly to be conclusive.

It’s terrifying that you are a scientist. A scientist who doesn’t believe in science. Loads of credibility.

@Helleofabore What happens to all those people who are found to be ‘not’ having the diagnosable finding but who have said they are the opposite sex, and even have extreme body modification to fit their belief ? Are those people simply dumped from the transgender category?

That's easy. They are in the queue for the next diagnosable finding😘

Oh shit! I thought that I understood @Tandora 's definition of trans as being someone who has gender dysphoria. And I thought that could be a working definition. And then the next time that I returned to this thread, gender dysphoria is what trans people suffer if they are not confirmed.

I'm sorry lovey. If it sounds like crap it probably is crap. I cannot make head nor tail of your position but if it has enabled you to spin 2 decades of employment then good luck to you.

It’s terrifying that you are a scientist.

There's a massive social science industry publishing on trans. I think it's fair to say it's quite a different style of writing.

This may be relevant:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair

They do tend to merge into one great big polysyllabic salad of bullshit!

Almost all of the published peer reviewed of scientific research out there supports what I am saying. Please read some of it, instead of media/ social media and campaigning orgs like sex matters and transgender trend.

Oh, then you’ll be happy to provide a few links then? Like proper, peer reviewed stuff, not transactual links or the nature magazine? Awesome. I can’t wait.

Ok this thread has turned into the usual personal insults , fingers in ears, you're wrong and stupid and awful etc etc. so I'll leave it there.

If I see any of you on another thread, however, please do not start the "no one has/ can explain what being trans is" falsehood. Some more accurate/ objective/ honest statements would be:

"I'm not convinced by the explanations of being trans I've been offered".

"the explanations of being trans I've heard make no sense to me".

"I don't understand when people try to explain what being trans is".

In your several decades in science you must have learned how to reference.