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.

Thanks I appreciate our discussion too and do see your perspective even though we disagree.

Of course! What we need is a range of more variable/ nuanced categories tailored to the specific sport, like in the Paralympics. I reckon this would also diversify the types of sports and bodies that are celebrated.

The problem then comes to how you categorize people into the correct categories in the sports. The Paralympics is not without controversy on this front, from people passing themselves off as belonging to a category they don't.

So you are left with objective measurements to categorize people fairly. Simple ones. Weight (where it matters like boxing) . Sex. There are very few sports that are not sex affected.

I think with gymnastics, if lads started off early enough in the 'womens' disciplines they could be schooled in the grace and flexibility aspects - it's just that it's not prioritised on their training. I'm not sure they'd ever manage some of beam moves due to gonads, but that is the only physical limitation blocking them.

Do you have examples of what these might look like in any specific sport, and the rationale for replacing female/male categorisation?

I have seen men land full on the beam legs fully akimbo!

Of course.

My point being that if you took sex out of the equation and only ever grouped by other factors: weight, agility, strength, power, stamina, age, whatever, outside maybe the lowest "we just turned up to give it a try" rank and groups who are training together non-competetively, you'd end up with groups that pretty much segregated by sex anyway even if no one acknowledged that.

And in that context I can also see that elite women would much prefer to be in the top 5 percent ranking of female peers than the, ooo let's say top 25 percent overall.

It would entirely depend on the sport. Some things that could be looked at depending on the sport -
weight/ weight class,
muscle fatigue resistance,
height,
muscle mass,
joint flexibility,
testosterone or other hornonal balances,
range of motion,
aerobic capacity or araerobic power,
balance and agility
Cold tolerance
Ligament elasticity

Any chance you could answer my long, carefully thought out post where I asked you about my trauma as against a trans persons trauma and why they shouldn’t be held to the same standard as me?

You realise this reads like you just took a list of the typical differences between men and women that affect sports performance, yes?

So basically you entirely acknowledge sex matters, you just don't want to admit it?

We've explained in detail why this doesn't work in sport in tandora's previous thread. I'd prefer to see answers to the persistent unanswered questions in this thread.

I would delete that but I can't. I think I have seen men land full on the beam legs full splits, but I'm not certain. Please do not take what I said as true without checking.

And would these be within sex classes or across the sex classes?

By the way, there already is a category separating 'testosterone'... it is called the open or the male category and those without having any benefit of any male puberty compete at the moment in the 'female' category.

And would that ligament elasticity then separate out female people at different times of their menstrual cycle? Would that mean that a female person would qualify into different categories on different days of any competition?

And the aerobic capacity, would that then include separate sub categories also for the type of muscles and the leverage a body has (such as % of twitch muscle etc) or will a female athlete with excellent aerobic fitness just be completing a male athlete with excellent aerobic fitness and it will be just like an elite female athlete competing against a male elite athlete where it is very unfair for the female athlete.

Across "sex classes" (as you call them). And probably you'd take several of these metrics and balance them depending on the sport. And of course this isn't an exhaustive or definitive list of what could be considered. Yes you'd have strong gendered patterns in your heats, just like we already have pronounced patterns in sport based on race, etc.

Firstly, the video is only a bit of fun, it's not supposed to be more than that really. And yes the elements are carefully chosen and in isolation. They aren't routines that could be perfomed under the code of points.

But I think the bigger point, to step back, is that women's gymnastics and men's gymnastics are completely different sports. Different apparati, set up differently, different requirements, even from similar looking events. It is not like for like and was never supposed to be. Even the vault is set up differently.

So I can't really provide the evidence you're talking about, because there aren't like for like routines to compare. Men don't train the same apparati as women.

However, to take one example, I can't imagine a male gymnast getting anywhere close to a competitive beam routine as beam is most tailored to women's strengths. If you look at the leap requirements on beam, men do not have the back flexibility and and fast twitch (combined with balance) to do that to the same level as the women. That's before you get into purely flex moves, choreo, acro sufficiently accurate and balanced to land on 10 cms.

@Tandora trying again. Please can you answer me. Thank you.

I have been respectful, I have not been insulting. I have engaged with you. I accept your premise that trans people exist.

But you refuse to even acknowledge my question.

She's trying to fill the last page with a sidetrack to hide the fact that she has still failed to explain why a male bodied person's perception that he is a woman is more significant than the reality that he is male.

Human bodies have a physical and observable sex. It is either male or female. In a sub 1% set of humanity that observation may require medical investigation to determine but for more than 99% of people their sex is observable at birth and is a fact known by them throughout their lives. This is true regardless of how the mind may perceive the body.

The sex of the body leads to different physical appearance and different physical capabilities, especially when it comes to the reproductive role.

In most human cultures these differences in physical appearance and capabilties lead to different social roles and from that, assymetric social power, a belief that male bodies and female bodied women were also mentally suited to different tasks and roles, and in many a sense of male entitlement to and ownership of women, both economic and sexual.

This history of sexism and marginalisation of female bodied people is now considered to be a great injustiuce, but even so the social expectations and pressures it lead to still act on us today often in subconscious ways, meaning having a female body carries consequences that a male body does not.

In recognition of this, people with female bodies have sex specific rights and protections that are reserved for them because of their body sex.

Women-only spaces and women-only rights and sex-specific language exist for these reasons and these reasons are directly related to our actual sex in the physical world, because they are primarily to do with how others react to our sex.

Our inner view of ourself does not come into it (I mean fuck me, if we could get society to see us as we see ourselves we'd never have needed bloody Feminism in the first place!).

There is simply no justifcation for adding some men into that because they do not need the same things. Not even if some of them truly are people who genuinely perceive themselves as women for as yet undiscovered biochemical reasons. Their needs are not our needs, and our needs also matter.

@taztoy you do this on every thread - ask me the same question over and over again - which seems to boil down to why does my trauma matter less than someone else's or something?

I'm very sorry for what you have been through and how it has affected you.
I do understand trauma from CSA/ rape because I have lived it.

I do not want to play trauma trumps - that's not what this conversation is about.

Well, considering what you are suggesting has already been modelled by experts in the sports and found to fail at providing fair competition, maybe you should take your own advice and accept expert testimony on a field of study you are ill informed about.

But you are playing trauma trumps, where unpspecified hurtyfeelz in men trumps actual genuine trauma in women. The way you ghave treated taztoy on this thread has been disgraceful and I am astonished that you have escaped firm moderation.

That’s not what I did in my question. You should stop
lying about what I am doing and stop assuming my motives as that is not posting in good faith.

thank you.

Taztoy's question goes straight to the heart of the discussion though.

Taztoy's question is relevant to the application of your hypothetical discussion points. You don't seem to be able to give an answer, which is what she is noting across threads.

unpspecified hurtyfeelz

People keep asking - so I will provide it - this is exactly the kind of comment that I find exceptionally transphobic. It's beyond degrading/ demeaning, and totally unacceptable. It has no place in a serious discussion on this topic. This is a perfect example of people using SGBV trauma as an justification/ excuse/ cover for transphobia.

I haven’t done that though. And you haven’t answered me. You have assumed my motivations and categorise me unfairly and in a way that isn’t justified.

You do realize that the only reason I posted that was in response to the disgusting way you minimize the feelings of someone like Taztoy. Men would never hear things you claim are transphobic if they - and people like you - left women alone

You and you alone are entirely responsible for the words you chose to post.

It is not a cover for transphohia, whatever that may be. It is a legitimate reason for not wanting men, however they identify, in spaces where women are vulnerable. Why are you so determined to stop those spaces existing?

And again your use of playing trauma trunps is despicable. I have rarely been so appalled by any of the TRAs on here, and that's some stiff competition.