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 haven’t explained what trans is? You’ve said it’s a neuro disorder, but provided no proof, and that hypothesis actually does not show how it has been reached? You would have to test every person claiming to be trans. Or a huge number, to confirm this and no such study has been done. A few months ago, you claimed trans was a DSD, what changed your mind? You also said sex was not binary but again provided no proof apart from people with DSD? People with DSD are still male or female so how does that prove sex is not binary?

What do I consider to be transphobic ? I could pick 100s
of posts from this thread an others.

There was one just a few posts above your question, here:

I can't imagine her saying that face-to-face if she ever had the misfortune to be incarcerated with a trans-identifying male

I have read the thread @Tandora you still haven’t provided any peer reviewed published studies showing trans is a neurological disorder. You’re the one who said I should read stuff, but if you won’t tell me what to read, what if I read the wrong stuff and it shows your conclusions are wrong? What will I do then?

TBF, Nature is, besides Science, probably the most important scientific journal out there but Tandora didn't link to one of their peer reviewed articles publishing new and original research, T linked to what is some sort of opinion piece. That was the moment that confirmed to me beyond doubt that Tandora's decades in science only exist in Tandora's head. No scientist would do that.

I've explained what it is.

I can't provide you with the "proof" you seek, other than suggest you read the empirical scientific literature and/or talk to trans people in the real world, at depth, and actually listen.

similarly if I tried to explain what autism is to you I wouldn't be able to link you to one study that definitively "proves" what autism is based on testing all or the majority of autistic people in the world- that's not a reasonable expectation.

However what I can do is offer you a description/ explanation of what being trans is. You can say it doesn't make sense to you, you haven't seen proof of it, It sounds ridiculous and stupid, you don't believe it etc etc. Fine. But don't pretend it hasn't been done.

Well this is false as well

what if I read the wrong stuff and it shows your conclusions are wrong? What will I do then?

i would hugely welcome this. As long as you read widely using a scientific journal/ database, and not the one or two cherry picked articles or pop psychologists promoted on YouTube/ by sex matters and such .

If you start with a scientific journal and read the empirically based peer review research - you will find that the overwhelming majority of published literature out there is consistent with a position that being trans is a real, observable condition of the nature I have described to you on this thread.

Yet more evidence you don't even understand what science does.
There are very rarely single studies that proof anything beyond doubt, not in the life sciences at least. Different scientists publish their results and interpretations and out of all these different datapoints (usually very narrow in scope) and many debates a more or less generally accepted consensus and bigger picture emerges. You don't understand that at all, don't you?

There are very rarely single studies that proof anything beyond doubt, not in the life sciences at least. Different scientists publish their results and interpretations and out of all these different datapoints (usually very narrow in scope) and many debates a more or less generally accepted consensus and bigger picture emerges.

That is exactly the point I have been trying to make across this entire thread.

Thank you for setting it out quite clearly.

Please read the thread.

I have read the thread.
You need to reference the studies that you think support your points, then other people can look at the data and experiment design and decide how plausible they think it is. This is how it works, you make a claim, you need to support it.

This questioned has been repeatedly asked and addressed .

We are dealing with a very broad subject- what is it to be trans. this is not something fully demonstrated or proved by one study. Most studies have a much more narrow / specific focus. it's a picture that emerges from the total body of scientific evidence .

The vast majority of peer review empirical scientific literature supports what I have shared with you here about what it is to be trans . You can read almost anything.

Someone then asked me to post at least 3 peer review studies, as a starting point - so I did, I posted 3.
One psychological study with a control group exploring gender/ sex cognition in early childhood.
One review of the scientific literature concerning the biological contributions to gender diversity ,
and one specific study with a comparator group exploring structural brain measures in trans women, hypothesising that there may be a polygenic underpinning to gender dysphoria tied to sex- hormone signalling genes which operate across the body including the brain. ( Then a pp did the usual and pointed out all the inevitable limitations with this study).

Furthermore -

you make a claim, you need to support it.

My aim here was not to prove to you all I am right - I am well aware that I am not able to do that. My aim was much much more modest than that:

What I wanted to do was to explain what being trans is in a way that pps could understand. So even if they thought - well there's no evidence of that- they could at least see that it is at least possible. I'm so tired of people saying that being trans is make believe because it's not logically possible and that they've never heard a coherent explanation . That is what I was seeking to unpack.

The claims you make throughout this thread are very vague and they also change. If you reached these conclusions based on reading far and wide, you should be able to set out your argument coherently with a reference (or more than one) to back up every pillar of your hypothesis, not just vaguely wave your hands around.
Take your time, I've got a plane to board.

I have no doubt that there are isolated ,
specialised cases where people pretend to be trans (just like people pretend to be disabled, gay, of a particular religion, whatever) to confer some very specific perceived advantages in a particular context - eg lenient parole for people leaving incarceration.

This is completely different to a meaningful risk that predatory men will pretend to be trans so that they can enter basic public facilities like toilets and changers to attack women, (especially if we don't ban all trans people from using spaces according to their gender). This is quite simply not rational and not evidenced. This is moral panic rooted in transphobia.

What do you say to women who are saying we do not want biological men however they present or identify, and regardless of what pieces of paper they have in our single sex spaces?

This is completely different to a meaningful risk that predatory men will pretend to be trans so that they can enter basic public facilities like toilets and changers to attack women, (especially if we don't ban all trans people from using spaces according to their gender). This is quite simply not rational and not evidenced. This is moral panic rooted in transphobia.

The logical failure there is that the position doesn't require anything of "trans".

Do you think we'd have a different response to the proposal if you substituted any other justification for letting men into women's spaces?

I can assure we'd object equally to any attempt to substitute an "X" for sex that let men into women's spaces.

And someone could then say.

"This is completely different to a meaningful risk that predatory men will pretend to be X so that they can enter basic public facilities like toilets and changers to attack women, (especially if we don't ban all X people from using spaces according to their X). This is quite simply not rational and not evidenced. This is moral panic rooted in Xphobia."

The objection is to form of the policy that lets males into female spaces. It's male-phobia. Change X, the response won't change. Change the "letting males into female spaces", and the response will.

The scientific literature shows that there are people who obsessively desire to be the opposite sex, and that for a subset of these people there may be neurobiological correlates, albeit ones that also correlate with homosexuality.

But that's not an argument for letting males use female spaces, nor that TWAW/TMAM.

I understand perfectly this logic. I find it dogmatic and out of touch with reality.

My response above (about people pretending to be trans) was part of a conversation where people were saying "ok fine this is trans, but if we allow this, how do we separate the people who are really this and those who are just pretending to access women". That was the point I was debating.

It's interesting that people always use correlation with homosexuality as somehow counter-factual evidence. Same with the correlation with autism. It's another example of the binary thinking of people's brains. It's the artificial , culturally informed logic that people project/ impose - that these things must be mutually exclusive , binary categories- if one, then logically not the other .

Why is it so hard to perceive that things can be more than one thing at the same time?

These things are absolutely empirically correlated (brain structures in gay men and trans women, being trans and having ASC). That doesn't disprove their existence, it strengthens the evidence that these are real, identifiable and predictable patterns of human diversity with biological/ developmental underpinnings.

So women should put up, shut up and run the risk of predatory men in their spaces because it's more important that a few trans women don't feel sad than for women to feel safe.

Or put it another way it's better for a female to have her neck broken on the rugby pitch than it is to make a trans woman upset.

Or it would be OK for NASA to claim they have sent a woman to the moon if they decide to include a trans woman in the new space programme.

But you also repeatedly state it's not a case of either or so how will this brave new world work?

It doesn't have to be binary thinking. One interpretation of that outcome is that there are different types of trans-identifying males, one of which correlates with homosexuality. Ray Blanchard writes about this in his work on constructing a typology of transsexualism.

Still doesn't mean these guys are women or should be granted access to women's spaces though.

@Tandora I wish you would stop using autism as your reference in your arguments. Autism is not one disease, it is a spectrum ranging from people operating at senior level in business (I'm married to one of those) through to people who can't function in life without huge support.

It bears no relationship to a binary situation of men believing they should live as women and women believing they should live as men.

Ok. Just give me a list of these peer reviewed published papers ( not articles) and I’ll read them. You’ve given me your definition of what you think trans is. That’s not A definition. Why would I believe some random on the Internet? You said there was loads of research proving your theory, so just give me a list abd I’ll read it. .

It's not just males though, and please remove "identifying"- being trans isn't an "identity" any more than being gay is . This, however, absolutely:

*that there are different types of trans males people, one of which correlates and a correlation with homosexuality".