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.

No, but I am, and other women's voices on both sides are welcome on this thread.

My question is What is "trans" and why does it justify undoing sex in law, society, culture and history?

So Taztoy's experience of needs that are specific to her sex are entirely relevent here. Can you explain "transness" in such a way that it makes sense to Taztoy that her perception of male and female will change to the point she does not have a trauma reaction to a male person if that person is "trans"?

The issue is not about "transness" itself, it is that TRAs believe it overrides sex.

That is what needs to be justified. The taking away of women's voices and the delegitimising of our own knowledge of ourselves. What explanation for transness explains that?

Given that sex clearly has had and still does have a significant influence on our physical abilities and social experience and outcomes, what is "trans" and why does it justify undoing sex in law, society, culture and history?

Thank you @FlirtsWithRhinos

The issue is not about "transness" itself, it is that TRAs believe it overrides sex.

Quite

And as there is (as far as I can see) absolutely nothing that cohesively unites actual women with so called 'transwomen', that also excludes men who don't identify as trans - it is astonishing that the question needs to be posed in the first place.

I also think that if we have to have a hierarchy of trauma, Taztoy's, and that of other women with similar experiences, must be viewed as more important since it is not self inflicted, than any trans person's trauma in so far as it relates to their transness (exemptions obviously for non trans issue related trauma) as they made the choice.

Being trans is a naturally occurring form of neurodevelopmental difference.

@Tandora

What has happened in the last 3 months or so to alter being trans from being a DSD to it being a difference of neurodevelopment?

I await you expert explanation.

Agreed, but the trauma is also not very relevant to the conversation as no degree of trauma should allow men to access women's spaces.

If 'transwomen's' trauma needs accomodation, it must be done in a way that doesn't affect women at all.

Oh I absolutely agree, but it's an argument that's often brought re allowing these men into female spaces. As you say, it's not relevant, but as it's used, I thought I'd put my thoughts down.

Sure, if this were just curiosity about the expereince.

But we are being asked to undo sex in law, society, culture and history, with all the repurcussions that has not just for trans people but for everyone, especially original female meaning) women, on how we see ourselves, understand ourselves and make sense of our expereinces, how we identify and justify the type of supports and protections we do, or don't, need society to put in place for us, how we relate to each other as individuals and as public bodies.

That. Is. Massive.

So no, it's not good enough to say "Oh we can't describe it or explain it or even tell you why you as a (female bodied) woman are now in the same social group as male trans women, you just have to accept that this is how it is now".

If it's this important, if it's this obvious, if it's this fundamental that you can redefine every single human being on the planet based upon it, yes I bloody well do think it needs a bit more substance than "ooooo everyone's experience is different, words mean different things to different people, but as long as they feel they are a woman (or a man) that is all we need".

So sure, if none of my suggestions fit then you, or anyone else is free to use your own words. I welcome it.

But say something real. Draw the dots between that thing you can describe in your own words and the social reconfiguration you are demanding because of it to explain why the former justifies the latter.

Don't just say "No it's not that" to every possible attempt to pin the damn thing down before we act on it!

Trans is wishful thinking.

Sex is unavoidable reality.

That definition requires the belief that we have a
’self’ that differs from our material, bodily reality. That is something that has been debated for hundreds of years and is a matter of faith.

I believe that what we call our ‘self’ is just the connections, memories and experiences within the brain. The brain which is the same sex as the rest of the body. The brain that knows which hormone signals to send where. You are talking about a personality. Personalities can have stereotypically feminine or masculine traits, but they don’t have a sex. The sex part is the physical bit.

So I won’t accept a definition that involves a disembodied ‘self’ as that is not a concept that is accepted or scientific by nature. There is no definition of ‘self’

Thank you for replying.

I read this as somewhat close to people are the sex they physically are 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 but with a possible biochemical driver that you believe one day will be found.

But even with that understanding of your position (with which I do have some issues BTW in terms of how it fits observed evidence, the number of leaps and assumptions required and the fundamental belief that if someone believes something hard enough society should bend itself to pretend that belief is true - that the false reality of a suffering person has more authority than the shared reality of - well, reality, and what that does to other people's ability to make sense of their own lived experiences) I'm still not sure why a trans woman's flawed sense of his physical sex should override the reality of my sex.

I can draw a direct line between the risks and inequalities (physical and social) that I experience as a female person and the rights and protections that exist for female people. A trans woman cannot do that.

He may have some common risks because of patriarchy's tendency to devalue feminine men but he has never experienced the interplay of the female bodied self and the male focussed society that female people grow up with. Indeed in many ways we are exactly opposite in that he craves the trappings of womanhood when we often feel trapped by them.

You seem to be saying that while a trans woman's need is not for those specific rights and protections (obviously not as he is not a woman) but he still needs then simply to counteract the unbearable knowledge that he is not in fact a woman.

If so, in your opinion, can trans people ever be accomodated as the sex they are, eg third spaces, neutral language or indeed a whole new separate language of gender, or is it always going to have to come down to society agreeing to pretend they are the opposite sex and and legal, cultural or practical recognition of women's shared lived reality as embodied female humans has to be surpressed to enable the pretence?

Can trans women be accomodated as out and proud trans women, male people with a biochemically female body imprint (whatever that might mean) who are accepted as exactly that without requiring that the language, rights and lived expereinces of women are silenced to make space for their male body?

You are fixated on whether trans women are a sexual or physical risk to women, but you are missing the cultural and social surpression women experience in mixed sex spaces. If women (original female meaning) in a woman-only space end up not having a serious conversation about their sex based experiences, or asking for help with sex based challenges, because there is a trans women there and they fear offending or distressing him, then that is a bad outcome for women.

There is no logical, nor evidence, base for the idea that banning trans people from using basic facilities, like toilets and changing rooms, in accordance with their gender will have any impact whatsoever on reducing prevalence of violence and women and girls. Indeed, these policies will have quite the reverse effects of increasing gender based harassment in public spaces.
@Tandora
There is both logic and evidence to support this - you just choose to disregard it. But putting that aside what about sports? Why should female sports accommodate males who are (as a class) faster, stronger and have more robust bodies (and therefore are less injury prone). Why do women have to lose safe, fair competition in order to make a minority of male bodied people happy. Why is it on women to suck it up and be unhappy so men aren't?

But it's not even about us having to evidence that transwomen make us unsafe.

What would be the justification for allowing one small set of men into sex-specific spaces that don't belong to them? There is none, beyond male demands.

Why must women be constantly gatekeeping their rights against male encroachment? These men have their own spaces, services, sports. Why would anyone agree they deserve women's too?

That's because autism and ADHD are neurodevelopmental conditions. And trans is a psychological condition. As distressing as it is, which I don't say lightly, it is psychological therefore psychological therapies can help with the distress.

OP here.

On the original thread I asked Tandora specifically what she thinks to be clear that I understood her position. Not because she is the arbiter of all thing trans but because she is making assertions about how society should function based on how she understands "trans" and I want to understand if her logic is sound.

And I asked her again here because she replied to me insisting she has explained it, which I didn't agree with so asked her to reopen that so I can see what I missed. Which she has graciously done.

I find it is important to understand what someone is saying and how they have come to their conclusions, even if do not agree with those conclusions. How else can one make a strong argument for what one does believe?

Whether her explanation is "true" or not, whether every trans person would agree or not, is irrelevent if the logic doesn't hold in the first place.

I don't care if people are wrong in their own lives, I just care that if we are going to do something as major as undefine sex legally and socially we have a really good solid reason for it. And as per my OP, I do not think any of the explanations I have read for "trans" really justify the demands being made.

Genderism is like Whack-a-mole. They have so many contradicting stories and will pull out whichever one they think will justify the current ask eg surely we are ok to say yes to a sad man quietly using a ladies toilet if the alternative is he spends his whole life in deep distress simply because of a chemical misfire in his brain.

So sometimes it's important to look at the overall ask - the social and legal undefinition of sex - and say "does your argument" - in this case the chemical misfire that makes a male bodied person genuinely believe they should be female - "really justify that? And if not, where are you going to draw the line?"

Exactly. Why do we have to draw attention to the very high number of distressed females, and draw attention to their distress, to justify that males shouldn't be in females spaces.
We are legally entitled to those spaces for our own comfort and dignity. Safety is additional

@Tandora

Props to you for rising to the challenge and providing an answer. I'll even buy that some people might have a neurological difference that causes, in them, a categorisation error (not an authentic self-perception) that affects how they relate to other people and to their body. I'm disappointed by this, though:

If you are trans, attempting to suppress, deny your cognitive experience of sex, including through being forced to live in your natal sex role, (e.g. being treated as per your birth sex wherever men and women, boys and girls are treated differently) can cause profound and debilitating psychological distress. This distress is so pervasive and intense that it can result in clinical depression, anxiety, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, self-harm, suicidality and even psychosis.

Because you could equally have typed:

If you are human, attempting to suppress or deny your sensory experience, or empirical finding, of the sex of another human being, including through being forced to pretend that they have changed sex, can cause psychological distress and multiple other bad outcomes, including shoddy scientific data, transgression of privacy norms, and the scrapping of measures designed to protect women from assault and unfair competition, and to enable men, women, gay men, lesbians, and religious minorities to all participate in society on as equal a footing as possible. It's particularly egregious to force SA survivors and religious women to stay at home or risk encountering a man behind closed doors. But even men are entitled to their privacy FFS!

This affects everyone, and fewer than 20% of British people are OK with it. It's huge. So surely trans people are the ones who must adapt, and find a way around their psychological problem.

1% of the population wants 100% of the rights.
It does not compute.
Men, because that's what you are and that's how you behave, need to understand that no means no. You are not one of us.

It is literally just that - to have a pervasive , profound, unrelenting recognition of self as being the opposite sex.

I don’t think we can agree on “recognition”, but perhaps “assessment”. You can’t recognize what’s not true.

Nevertheless, why must affirmation by society the correct response?

Absolutely. And yet again, like the broken record that I am turning into, I am still waiting for an answer from a TRA as to why they are demanding women's spaces rather than third spaces.

I can imagine we have a mental body map and that accidents or even chemical misfires can distort or damage it. And I know that we can easily reprogram our mental map if we spend enough time imaging and pretending and visually faking our body 1 (which puts an interesting chicken and egg spin on the whole "wrong body" narrative and trans people reporting how long they spend imagining and obsessing they had the body of the opposite sex, right?).

A body map that grows out of our multi-sensory awareness of our body, yes. That it can damaged and distorted, yes.

However I cannot see (and the body transfer illusion would support this) that the body map is somehow programmed into us from pre existing blueprints and sometimes we get the wrong one. That it can be entirely correct, just not for our body, like it was selected from some cosmic pattern book? No.

I mean, even if you did believe this, why just sex? Why not height, or headshape? Why don't we get people freaking out because their legs are too long or too short? How do trans women even hold their pee if the brain that runs the body thinks it's in a woman and doesn't know about the penis? Does the misfire that sets up the wrong blueprint also generate cable adapters?

^1 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_transfer_illusion^

We absolutely must find ways in society to accommodate this small minority group of people

Why must we?
Why, yet again, is this accommodation to be made by women, for the benefit of this "small minority group" of men?

This small minority of people can be accommodated by being accommodated as they were, for the most part, until very recently. They use the facilities for their sex.

@Tandora

Just want to say that while I don't agree with you, I genuinely apreciate that you joined the thread and have explained clearly what you understand trans to be.

Have a standing ovation from me. I will bookmark the thread to make sure I use this version of "trans" in future discussions with you.

One question based on what you have said - do you think like many genderists that there are mental differences between women and men that drive ones personality and tastes, and the biochemical misfire that leads to the "wrong" body map also assigns a "woman"'s (or man's) mentality, or do you think the core of the trans experience is simply the existential distress of the physical body not matching the mental map, the phenomenon of mental/preference differences at the population level between men and women is simply socialisation, and any alignment a trans person believes they have with traditionally "female" or "male" qualities is more to do with the trans person subconsciously trying to align with the stereotypes of the sex they believe themselves to be?

This is not a gotcha. A someone who thinks being trans is essentially a biochemical miswiring between body map and body I genuinely want to understand how you see the more sexist side of genderism.

It is literally just that - to have a pervasive , profound, unrelenting recognition of self as being the opposite sex.

Recognition or feeling? Recognition implies recognising something that is inherently true, and it is not at all true that a trans-identifying male is a woman. If a dog brought up among cats grows up thinking it is a cat, this isn't 'recognition' of its true cat self. It's a mistake.

Also, you say transness is 'naturally occurring'. What do you actually mean by that, and what proof is there that it is naturally occurring rather than caused by external experiences and influences?