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.

Wouldn't we all but if we get any answer at all it will be 'but I've already answered that, you obviously just don't understand, anyway I believe, with science to back me up, that no woman is ever scared of male bodies in single sex female spaces they are just lying bigots who don't understand unlike clever me.' Rinse, repeat

Decades as in more than 1 decade, yes

Science as in actual biological and neurological foundations?

Or science as in social science?

Have you published?

Why do you place the rights of transgender people above mine? For @Taztoy.

so many mumsnetters insist that it's not real thing and there's no way to describe it coherently, and or dismiss it as being trivial / absurd (oh they like to put on lipstick and call themselves Nancy).

trans ppl are clearly real - they're just not the opposite sex and they never will be.

the fact that you still refuse to acknowledge this and still cannot see that it is literally impossible to accommodate @Taztoy need for a single sex space and a man's desire to be in that space to affirm his womanhood means yes you are right, conversation is impossible

fortunately the law is clear so men can stay out of women's spaces

We need to find ways of organising society so that we can accommodate a diversity of different needs.

3rd/4th spaces for trans people would do just that. So why do you not seem to be able to embrace this solution?

Okay, so this is a start....

We need to find ways of organising society so that we can accommodate a diversity of different needs.

What would be your proposals for doing that, for "finding ways", if Taztoy and others like her cannot be in a space with male-bodied people?

Going by her response to Taztoy, Tandora denies - in the face of the evidence - that there is a clash between the rights she claims for men who say they're women and the rights of women.
You can't convince people a problem doesn't exist by simply ignoring it. You have to address it and explain why it doesn't exist and why women like Taztoy don't really feel what they feel, or why it doesn't matter, or even - perish the thought - how her distress could be alleviated. The fact is that there is no way of including male people in the class of women that does not erase the validity of Taztoy's distress and impinge on all of our rights, while there is a compromise - additional spaces - that allows a MCW not to have to directly face the reality of his manhood. (Whether that is healthy for them is another question.)

It's so staggeringly simple. And in fact there are plenty of places now that have a female, male AND mixed sex option so increasingly this option is already there.

Which makes me wonder why so many trans identified males are so keen on still going into the single sex toilets and consider women saying 'no' as something to get upset/angry about. It's almost as if sharing with consenting women who will expect males in their spaces isn't enough, somehow.

For some reason I am now thinking about red bunting.

Well, there still doesn't seem to be any coherent description of what trans is. It seems to be so many things at once that it defies description.

For people like Susie Green's child, it's the parents' fear that their child may grow up to be gay. "Better a straight daughter than a gay son". This is the reason that sucks in children.

For people like Juno Dawson, it's because being gay is only a "consolation prize", and transition is better. For Dawson, it's all about the sexual experience as a "woman". Paris Lees said similar.

For people like Andrea Long Chu, it's all about the fetish. The sissy porn to transition pipeline. Debbie Hayton has said that for him it's all about Malaga Airport.

For teenage girls it's sometimes because they are lesbians, and sometimes it's because they don't like the look of what will be expected of them sexually as women. Sometimes it's pure social contagion: a wish to fit in.

I've only scratched the surface here, but already we're seeing several totally different reasons for transition. These can't possibly be all the same thing.

We need to find ways of organising society so that we can accommodate a diversity of different needs. That is what it is to live in a decent society.

Calling 'trans', 'coherent', 'natural' or a 'divergence' when it covers everyone from men who decide sparkley nail varnish allows them access to the ladies toilets, to Barbie Kardashian being allowed into female prisons is the furthest from 'coherent' you can get.

Maybe we should be asking what @Tandora's line is? Is Barbie being locked in a prison cell with a vulnerable female over it? At what point does 'sparkly nail varnish' to 'Barbie Kardashin locked in a cell with a vulnerable female' cross the line.

Or indeed, what would the 'differential diagnosis' of 'true trans' be? And why is it indecent to just clock and treat men as men?

So more than 20 years of formally studying gender identity?

Meaning pre 2005?

Tandora you talk about having a conversation yet you refuse time and time again to answer a question many times. Is that because you don't know the answer or is it that you don't want to have a conversation about the needs of "trans" trumping the rights of women ? Don't cherry pick.

Using the word recognition implies that there is something there to recognise. What tandora is describing is a belief. A counterfactual but (at least sometimes) sincerely held belief.

The question then is to what extent is categorising women together with men with beliefs a useful categorisation. And who's it useful to. Clearly - it's useful to the men. They get the pleasure of having their false belief validated. Often it's the opposite of useful to the women. So feminists will tend to fight against this change.

The false classification itself does harm to feminism too because by saying "women" includes some men, it becomes impossible to group together women's issues as affect women on the basis of biology and campaign for them. We shouldn't need to campaign for sports for people-who-haven't-been-through-male-puberty or better healthcare for people-with-uteruses. The word is women. It's a useful categorisation because it's so often relevant. If we were to concede the word women to men who want it, we'd need a new concise term for people with female biology, and we'd need to campaign all over again for rights for that group.

Yet to see any relevant difference between (female people without identities and male people with identities) and the rest of the population that might result in them having different experiences or needs. There's no common factor.

This thread is about what 'trans is' and why it matters because so many mumsnetters insist that it's not real thing and there's no way to describe it

Yet I think many trans people would also disagree with your suggestion that being trans is a psychological disorder similar to the case studies described by Oliver Sacks.

Excellent post.
The groups you identify can also be sub divided. Those seeking to remove the rights and safety of women and girls for their own desires / benefits - and those who are the victims in all this. Young victims of societal grooming that sex change is possible and desirable with the consequences of infertility, loss of sexual function and life long ill health being hand waved away by irresponsible (and often dangerous) adults.

Edited to say:
This is a great post, but I didn't mean to quote it!

We need to find ways of organising society so that we can accommodate a diversity of different needs. That is what it is to live in a decent society.

Just adding to what you have said, OldCrone - it's clear that the different cohorts all labelled trans do not all have legitimate needs that society should accommodate.

I support additional unisex toilets/changing areas because there is a benefit to the majority of women if a very altered female can use those instead of the women's facilities in order not to distress other women, while not outing herself. Both the woman with the trans identity and the majority of women benefit.
But I do not support additional open categories in sport, for example, because it just gives males another category using "diversity" or "community outreach" type resources which are siphoned off from women's events.

I dont know who tandora was studying decades ago, and how it compares with studies today.

Decades ago, girls were not transvestites or transsexuals. Eddie Izzards data would be classed as that of a cis man.

Have scientists really being studying how the brains of middle aged men dressed in pencil skirts walking slowly to the camera in their backgarden are similar to that of women? Or those who pose with breasts and penises in porn?

I'm skeptical.

The way we do for people in wheelchairs etc.

But the world isn't altered to make everywhere accessible to wheelchair users. We haven't pulled down all the shops and pubs and hotels and restaurants that are in medieval buildings that can't be adapted. There are 1000s of spaces that are off limits to wheelchair users.

We need to find ways of organising society so that we can accommodate a diversity of different needs. That is what it is to live in a decent society.

Women, regardless of their gender identity need single sex spaces and opportunities.

What TRA need to establish is why gendered spaces are need either instead of, or in addition to these single sex spaces.

When is it advantageous to me to be the same class as izzard, and exclude my husband and elliot page?

This reorganisation of society has to be built on something real and has to have a purpose.

Not to mention that a wheelchair user literally cannot take the stairs, or use a toilet in the same way as able-bodied people.
Society is accommodating a need, not a preference.

The key terms are provision of 'reasonable adjustments' to avoid 'substantial disadvantage'.
That is what 3rd spaces for people with certain disabilities and 4th spaces for anyone preferring or needing the absolute privacy of an enclosed room would provide

Eddie Izzard is really starting to be a bit awks for the genderwoo enthusiasts, isn't he?

being trans is a psychological disorder similar to the case studies described by Oliver Sacks

I wouldn't call being trans a 'psychological disorder', and of course it's completely different to the case studies described by Oliver sacks, which are all themselves specific and diverse.

I was trying to make people understand a little more about how cognition works.

People keep saying things like it isn't "logically possible" to be born with male physical characteristics like a penis and recognise/ experience oneself as female.
but of course it is possible - there are all kinds of psychological/ cognitive possibilities, that also have roots in biological/ physical processes in the body/ brain. Dr Sacks describes some fascinating and diverse cases of these.