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?

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Personally one of my favourite bits of this thread is the accusations that we both have a deep-seated resentment of expressions of femininity AND have never met a butch woman.

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

I wonder when the personality tests will start? It will be like living in a post apocalyptic YA novel.

"Perhaps you don't feel the need to make you self more attractive…or can't?"

This is up there with:

"While I appreciate your uneasiness in maintaining social conventions because you may believe they facilitate social harms, one could say that about anybody being 'let of the hook' for uncivilised/harmful behaviour. It's essentially saying 'because I disagree with you I don't have to treat you humanely'. And we all know how that ends: See Charlie Kirk.”

and telling women that they had the social responsibility to socialise male people so that they didn't harm them. Thereby, women had to let any male person access a group just because a male person wanted to be there.

and the use of 'whoring' in relation to female people.

I don't believe there is any feminist behind these posts.

Indeed.

differences in crying are especially robust, and tend to increase in more gender-egalitarian countries.

So for the purposes of showing innate difference between the sexes, they aren't robust. A behaviour that's not stable across cultures, or history, is a learned behaviour and one that is subject to social pressure and expectation.

Male leads in Bollywood films are constantly bursting into tears and nobody thinks less of them for it. In Britain up until the early 19th century it wasn't considered 'unmanly' to cry (the poem The Soldiers Tear is a useful marker of the turning point; it was written when it was just starting to be thought worthy of remark).

Women may on average cry more than men, and there may be hormonal as well as social reasons for that. But a woman who doesn't cry remains a woman, and a man who weeps buckets at the drop of a hat is nonetheless a man.

"See attached paper I already provided. And I never said behaviours belonged exclusively to males or females rather there were on average differences."

Having a category boundary that doesn't capture all the people within discrete groups makes that categorisation criteria useless and meaningless.

How many times does this need to be said?

For all the purposes of sex discrimination, both legitimate and illegitimate, sex has to be fully definable.

My pet theory for why this became so big relative to what came before is what I like to call the incel-to-trans pipeline.

Where previously in males you had the two Blanchard cohorts, in the mid 2010s there was a rapid acceleration of a new third cohort: young mildly autistic male shut-ins obsessed with anime and online gaming.

A good precis of this phenomenon was written in the Guardian by a video game journalist who calls himself Laura Dale: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2014/jan/23/how-world-of-warcraft-game-helped-me-come-out-transgender

In a classic case of saying the quiet bit out loud, he says that he played online as a female character and for the first time in his life, started getting positive attention and no doubt sexual attention from other players. Leap forward a couple of years and he is now castrated. These young men are the bulk of modern trans activism imo. They are often incredibly aggressive, hate women for not wanting them and spend all their time online driving the narrative that has cascaded through our institutions.

And even if you could convince people to have all these category boundaries relating to personality (imagine the chaos when people find out that they aren't actually empaths!), you would still need to categorise sex.

"Hello, can you tell me about my contraception options?"

"Well, firstly, how much do you cry?"

Yes.

If we behaved as the poster who is desperately trying to convince us that behaviour is a reliable criteria to categorise humans, we would then act very aggressively by posting ‘FLAWED LOGIC” with emojis under their post.

The irony of the discussion about behaviour of the sexes with this poster is rather clear.

behaviour is a reliable criteria to categorise humans'

We are on MN, where behaviour falls under one of the four humours: toxic, vile, narc or boundary-setting.

Very interesting.
So a sizable third group, in addition to the middle-aged male AGPs / transvestites, and the young females with mental health issues and/or autism.

This makes sense, as I don't think the ones who are smashing windows on public buildings etc. are mainly either the young females (transboys or transmen) or the older male transvestites.
Indeed, the angry incels can be MRA/TRA and go on these "protests" without going all the way into being trans themselves.

Why would any one be treating a man as a ‘woman’ though in any situation where sex didn’t matter? And if sex does matter, whether a man wants to be treated as ‘womanly’ is irrelevant. Because when sex matters, this concept of ‘social’ sex some people seem entrenched in trying to present as being so important, is irrelevant.

And how the fuck does a man know if he is being treated as if he is a woman or just a man within the very wide category of ‘man’? Or in which situation is he being treated like woman or a man and by which people?

There is nothing logical that I can see in this quoted post.

Do you mean the transmaxxers?

We had a couple come and educate us on transmaxxing a few years ago. It was very educational. And it keeps coming to mind when I read through some threads recently with new posters.

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Anecdotally, a TW among my acquaintance now bursts into tears at the drop of a hat (thanks to the oestrogen, I assume), but that doesn't seem to have prevented them from morphing into an angry, obsessive trans activist (or so I've heard). I don't think crying is actually a personality trait. It's just ... crying.

YY.

Behavioural examples more common in females:
Nurturing: Taking care of others' well-being, showing compassion, and being supportive.
Cooperation: Working collaboratively with others to achieve a common goal.
Empathy and sensitivity: Being in tune with the emotions of others and understanding their feelings.
Fashion and beauty: Wearing certain styles of clothing, makeup, or jewellery.
Communication: Being expressive, verbal, and communicative.

I think it's also important to also note that although men & women both share feminine & masculine traits they don't express these traits in the same way/style.

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?"

I was being sarcastic as in poking fun at GC biological essentialism. And no I don't believe not having a baby makes one unfeminine. Nurturing comes in many forms & there are plenty of mothers who are not the nurturing 'kind'.

Eleven pages to finally drag out a ChatGPT summmary of stereotypes. Well that was worth the wait.

Um no. Comprehension fail.

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

Trans women can change their structural & functional traits via hormones & surgery not to mention the definition specifies behavioural distinctions that trans women posses.

Behaviourally? They have more in common with men than women so they are more associated behaviourally with men but given they have other associations with women IE biological they qualify as 'women'.

The woman/man category being based on sex distinct associations includes both reproductive & behavioural traits meaning that individuals could go either way in terms of what category they define themselves as. So its upto an individual's subjective personal values how they identify.

My my, taking words out of context is text book argument insecurity.

I must be hitting some very fragile spots….

"So for the purposes of showing innate difference between the sexes, they aren't robust. A behaviour that's not stable across cultures, or history, is a learned behaviour and one that is subject to social pressure and expectation."

Lol, this is silly. It's like saying 'cause homosexuality is less expressed in Iran it must be a 'learned' behaviour '. Clearly, cultural pressures repress expressions.
That crying is more expressed in egalitarian countries doesn't mean women don't cry more than men cross culturally.

Women may on average cry more than men, and there may be hormonal as well as social reasons for that. But a woman who doesn't cry remains a woman, and a man who weeps buckets at the drop of a hat is nonetheless a man.

Reducing an entire temperament to a single behaviour isn't the slam dunk you think it is.

Having a category boundary that doesn't capture all the people within discrete groups makes that categorisation criteria useless and meaningless.

Really? Tell it to society who maintains behavioural distinctions thru human history. We as humans don't tend to 'keep things going' long term unless they serve a survival purpose.

How many times does this need to be said?
For all the purposes of sex discrimination, both legitimate and illegitimate, sex has to be fully definable.

And how many times does it need to be said competing rights aren't necessarily mutually exclusive? It's not exactly rocket science nor anything new to manage a compromise.

Back to the old "woman = eunuch with moobs" argument eh.