How did we get here?

[StormyPotatoes]

I like to hope with the Supreme Court ruling and public opinion changing rapidly we are finally moving into a new period where women’s rights and concerns matter, and biology prevails. But I don’t really understand how we got here to begin with and I really hope some knowledgeable posters can provide some background on this.

I am mid-to-late 30s. Femboi-emo kids were cute when I was a teen. I had a very huge crush on Brian Molko. Most of my male friends (and my now husband) wore eyeliner. Nobody in my year came out as gay whilst at school as the taboo still existed, but interestingly 3 girls in my mixed sex class of 30 came out as lesbians away from school (yes, they are all actual women - not men).

My exposure whilst a teenage to transsexuals was Hayley Cropper, the sympathetic and kind transwoman-played by an actual woman in Coronation Street; and Nadia, the winner of season 5 big brother, who I had forgotten all about in all honesty and was only reminded about due to current BB. It’s now occurred to me that the gender recognition act passed in the same year Nadia won BB.

At that time trans was unusual - I remember cross dressing being a thing and named, as we know, as transvestism. And I also remember, back then, so many of the historic and well documented serial killers had proclivities in cross dressing, which seems to now be downplayed.

So what happened between then and now? Why did very, very few men manage to influence the change in the Equality Act? Where did this sharp increase of trans people suddenly come from (we know it can’t be the GRA because most didn’t apply for it)?

And I think more importantly - why did both governments and media suddenly become so afraid to call a man a man? And worse, seek to punish a woman who dares to call a man a man. The GRA is one thing, but so many of the men who have been actively labelled as women by both politicians and journalists don’t hold a GRA. Where is the political and journalistic integrity they are supposed to uphold?

What happened? Not so much the boom in trans people but why they became a law of their own?

This is all to say that unless humans undergo some monumental transformational biological change that doesn't require procreation then you can look forward to them emphasising masculinity & femininity…& loving it till the cows come home.

Bit homophobic, no?

And remember now, you are speaking to women here. Not porn soaked men.

As in only 'making a baby' makes you 'feminine'?

And remember now, you are speaking to a feminist here. Not patriarchal soaked men.

OK so the best interpretation of the argument (not sure this is what the garbled posting in this thread is saying, but seems to be nipping at the heals of what I've seen elswhere) seems to boil down to:

People see "masculine" and "feminine" behaviour constantly linked to m/f sex in society and believe it to be correct - that behaving in 'FFF' way (no examples given) means you cannot be a man, and behaving in a 'MMM' way means you cannot be a woman. (Don't examine the specific behaviours too closely, or looks at data on it, because you'd see this falls apart).

This is widely acknowledged to be a sexist and data-illiterate view, because it ignores the huge variation within each sex and often disadvantages both sexes.

A 'MMM' female person would know this is provably wrong because they are literally a living example of it. But the deeply ingrained sexism in society cannot be overcome by fighting against the notion, so they should either change their behaviour/character (no-one really wants this, generally speaking) or change their sex (which they can't do) or change what people think their sex is (which they might have some chance at - at least they can make people say they think they're the opposite sex) so that when they're called a man/woman they believe that that's a judgment/acknowledgment of their character/behaviour being "MMM".

They think it's not the labels are wrong - or perhaps that they can't change the labels - but their body, or the perception of their body that is wrong, or they have a better chance of changing.

Making insinuations about a woman's attractiveness is very incell-y behaviour by the way.

We also see it from gender ideologists all the time - 'you're less attractive than transwomen - that's why you're so pissed off!' Etc etc.

It’s very charitable of you to make those bizarre streams of consciousness more coherent.

No, but he is more socially associated to women.

Except he isn't.

And goodness knows how any of this relates to your apparent theory that he might be doing this to procreate.

I think Howse is probably a fan of evopsych ideas. Like many sexists.

I'll ask again -

What do you consider 'expressions of femininity'?

Going off your post above, you appear to think that 'making a baby' is one. Putting aside the obvious issues with that ( I.e. your very typically incel insinuation that women who cannot make a baby are not feminine), then what else?

And goodness knows how any of this relates to your apparent theory that he might be doing this to procreate.

😆

"‘But 'sex' in essence is about distinctions’ - sex is the label given to describe a category within which the human race can be divided into male or female according to reproductive roles."

Yes there's reproductive distinctions AND behavioural. Any distinction qualifies. see 1 a AND b

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sex

"‘Does that make a biological man a biological woman if he is overly effeminate & presents that way socially? No, but he is more socially associated to women’ - there’s no ‘more or less’ ‘associated to women. You are either male (boy/man) or female (girl/woman)."

Nope. You can be both associated to biological females/male & socially associated females/male.

"‘…..he identifies more with women & as such wants to be treated as more 'womanly' than 'manly'’ - most posters on this board want to be treated and respected as human beings, not as ‘women’. Our experience of being treated like ‘women’ involves being paid less, expected to do domestic tasks, and being sexualised."

Obtuseness much.

A woman who has no desire to have sex with anyone - whether because she is a nun or would just rather have a cup of tea - still needs sex based rights.

What are evopsych ideas?

Hilariously, the link that keeps being posted now on different threads, contains this little gem:

"facial features –nose length, eye size, face width, and so forth –show considerable overlap between genders when they are considered one by
one. However, their combined effect results in nearly complete separation between male and female faces, and indeed, human observers can classify faces by gender with more than 95% accuracy".

Gosh... does Howsa ever read what they post?

Evolutionary psychology, which there is obviously often some grain of truth to, but its adherents are frequently sexist men who believe that all human behaviour is naturally oriented towards reproduction and that women will gravitate towards “alpha” type men. They often are quite bitter, resentful “nice guy” incel types IME.

And that's just faces, @Helleofabore. Add the rest of the body (which is so.much more than 'bigger/smaller frame') and you're practically at 100%.

But there's no point arguing with someone who thinks morphology is a behaviour.

I don't actually know if that's what is meant, and we'll have no way of knowing.

It just tends to be what a lot of genderists are getting at. I call it the "if you can't beat them, join them" position, and I have some sympathy towards individuals - particularly young or vulnerable ones -caught up in it, because who'd want to battle against sexism every day of their lives?
Rhetorical question...

So, going back to the OP, I think "ingrained, unexamined sexism" is part of "how we got here", for sure. The rigid linking of character traits to sex.

It follows logically that an example of X character trait in Y sex suggests that either the character trait is wrong, the sex is wrong, or the model that assigns one to the other is wrong (my apologies to the Marvellous Magical Sometimes-Correct Biology Diviner model for this blasphemy).

But all the resources given earlier in the thread highlight myriad other factors going on at the same time.

And we are back to the dictionary. I notice though that this poster has not posted what the dictionary actually says, just says the reference.

Well, here is 1 a) and 1b):

sex
1a) “either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures”

1b) “the sum of the structural, functional, and sometimes behavioral characteristics of organisms that distinguish males and females”

I think anyone who has learned to read the dictionary understands that all of 1 under that dictionary definition is reliant on the reproduction of humans.

After all c and d are :

1 c "the state of being male or female"
1d "males or females considered as a group"

Therefore the 'behaviour' in this context, refers to reproductive 'behaviour'.

I wonder where Kaitlyn Jenner fits into all of this?

I know, we have discussed this many times, haven't we? Skeleton, q-angles, musculature, and on and on.

But, isn't it amazing what people overlook in the links they post?

Tbf, we normally get hastily gathered abstracts, unreadable apart from to those with Shibboleth or similar access (which has the gatherer does not have as they have clearly not read anything but the abstract) as 'evidence'

Links from the TRA cheat sheets, clearly unread by the poster, which we can at least read are a step up, ....I suppose!

I know I would want to at least read through something before posting it as 'evidence'!

😂😂😂

And there it is, for all to see.

Wtf is this comment, says it all really.

www.researchgate.net/publication/274956064_Gender_Differences_in_Personality_and_Social_Behavior

The link that has been posted regurgitates the previous studies and revises their conclusions. When you travel back, it is a whole house of cards of papers all discussing this, and other sex differences as well. In any case, I believe that Howsa keeps focus on the 'big five'. And remember that quantitative study that Howsa used to post on (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3149680/)

*"Big Five Domains

The most widely adopted model of personality is the Five Factor Model (FFM), whose five domains are known as the Big Five:

neuroticism (negative emotionality and emotional instability),

agreeableness (altruism and cooperation),
conscientiousness (self-control, self-discipline, and organization),
extraversion (sociability, assertiveness, and positive emotionality),
and openness (imagination, intellectual curiosity, and aesthetic appreciation). "*

and

Summary

"Females enjoy a general advantage in communication skills, both in the verbal domain (with the exception of verbal analogies) and in the production and decoding of nonverbal displays. The higher expressiveness of females is reflected in a higher frequency of both smiling and crying; gender differ-
ences in crying are especially robust, and tend to increase in more gender-egalitarian countries. Consistent with the data on personality and social relations, males tend to use more assertive speech and interrupt their conversation partners more often, while females tend to use more affiliative and
tentative speech. However, gender differences in language use are highly dependent on contextual factors, testifying to the remarkable strategic flexibility of human communication."

So women, those of us who don't fulfil one or any of the criteria under the 'BIG FIVE' are male.

Because that is how categorisation works. You don't have people who don't fit the category in the category.