A space for respectful dialogue about sex, gender and diversity

[Tandora]

This is a thread for posters who want to talk and share a diverse range of opinions about sex, gender, being gender non-conforming and/or trans, and public policy. It is to learn from each other; to engage in a productive exchange, and to hear different sides of the story.

It is not a space for bullying and insults. Please do not join if your intention is to control the conversation and undermine those who disagree with you.

So what is the difference? Apart from one claiming to be a woman. Both are male. There is no changing that. So if someone puts on a dress does that make them a woman

My god I’ve just had de ja vu.

is this Zack posting?

So how come you get to make these proclamations on what is reasonable or not? The whole premise of this thread seems highly controlling, tbh.

It's a discussion board and has its very own set of rules, which already include being polite etc.

Which is illogical to the highest degree. How can someone observably male consider himself or be considered female when male and female are words which specifically refer to the two reproductive sex classes? If you'd said he recognises himself as feminine I would accept that, because feminine is a gender word referring to behaviour and presentation. Feminine males and masculine females are nothing out of the ordinary, whereas a female male is a contradiction in terms.

Looks like Tandora ran into the limits of their own ability to be respectful. Maybe it will help them gain some empathy with all the women who've had enough.

I imagine after Tandora's chum showed themself for what they are, Tandora won't be back.

Im not typing all that! I could namechange to RespectfullyArabellaSaurus? Quicker.

I agree, it's a very childish thing to do.

I don’t feel like a woman. Not particularly.

and very very often I wish I wasn’t. Especially since my rape.

but the biological reality is that I can’t identify myself out of that by my own cognition that things are different for me.

why is it different for trans people?

why isn’t it ok to say yes they are men who think they’re women and that’s ok, let them dress and express themselves however they like, wear make up, long hair, whatever the hell they like (I grew up in the 70s and 80s as a metal head and I love a man with long hair and a bit of guyliner)

but they’re still men. Men need to accommodate that version of manhood, and in return women need to accommodate the women with short hair, trousers, flat caps and drinking pints?

This sounds like a good compromise to me

Any more childish that claiming that the sex binary needs dismantling and that it will somehow be good for women?

Why should women and girls have to compromise at all?

Why on earth should men who claim to be women (or boys for that matter) force compromises?

No bullying, no lies, no insults, just the truth and fact. A man cannot be a woman and a woman cannot be a man. Simple fact. Men use the men's spaces and compete against other men in sports and if they break the law they go to a man's prison and women use the women's spaces and compete against other women in sport, if they break the law they go to a women's prison. There is nothing to discuss.

This is a long ramble as i try to sort my thoughts out. So apologies in advance.

I thought we'd managed to put much of this to bed in the 70's and 80's, when we asserted that how you dressed didn't make you any more or less a woman, and by extension that men wearing make-up were not trying g to be women nor, in the vernacular of the time "raging poofters". We tried not to stereotype.

It was well understood that men who wore stereotypical women's clothes - heels, dress, and pearls for instance - were TVs and did other either because they loved the feelings of the clothes, or liked the femininity.

So we had masculine women and feminine men. It seems that those labels were a much better description and attempting to use man/woman and apply it to the newly invented "gender identity" is a retrograde step.

And yes, I recognise that way back then there were people who wanted to, and succeeded, in living their life as the opposite sex.

It seems to me that the major issue here is the trans-activists who have messed things up for many people who were just quietly getting on with life and who were mostly accepted or not even noticed as different.

For me the contention is not "how do we treat trans-women" but the attempt to say that a trans-woman is a women.

By definition that statement has no validity. If you accept its premise then it becomes "women = women". It muddies any discussion if you try and insist there is no difference.

We don't say "disabled = not disabled". We explicitly recognise the difference and then try and make both lived experiences equally good. We also accept that they will never be the same and that, for most people, the world is just that bit tougher if you're differently constructed.

In that scenario we even solved the toilet problems by recognising the difference and providing extra or different facilities.

So I do feel that getting rid of that silly slogan would help a great deal.

But I also feel that we women are also at fault to some extent. As with everything recently the issue becomes polarised and there are people who vociferously assert "no men in women's spaces" without even considering the risk profile. I know some trans people that transitioned in their teens and go way beyond just "passing". They also like men not women and I'd consider them less threatening than many women i know. At the risk of stereotyping and being provocative we don't demand that a super-butch lesbian should be excluded from our spaces because we fear they'll be sexually predatory.

I know that toilets are not the only issue and that rape crisis centres and refuges and hospitals also represent areas where even an "innocent man" can cause major trauma.

That said, I do think the toilet issue is, to some extent overblown. After all, women go into men's toilets when the queues become extreme, and there is actually nothing to stop men going into a women's toilet. What we should have is not really a sanctuary but a way of flagging and immediately responding to bad behaviour by anyone in such a space. For that matter the whole population needs it, not just women in toilets.

I shall post this now. I haven't reread it so my cringe when I do. I just wanted to dump my thoughts if we're having a free discussion.

Feel free to pick holes in what I've written. My arguments can always be challenged.

Just avoid attributing motives to me or trotting out labels instead of disagreement.

A trans woman is a woman who is trans. She might have soome observable physical male characteristics, perhaps a beard due to testosterone, but if her mental health is good she will recognize her unchanging and unchangeable sex as female.

Nice summary.

Men are not women and women matter is the abridged version.

Any biological male who ‘understands himself to be a woman’ is basing this solely on his assumptions of what being female feels like - usually the sort of toxic gender stereotypes that women have been fighting free of for years - the shite that says liking pink, wearing skirts or make up, liking sparkly things, feeling submissive etc etc is what defines being female.

I think you're point of view is fairly good overall, but with an added and ultimately unnecessary and dangerous attempt to be kind.

Women's and LGB rights matter absolutely, and any compromise on what a woman is can only undermine both.

Yip. I don’t understand what “feeling like a woman” means other than in the biological sense of flooding from periods, being vaginally raped, having breasts, a cervix and needing a smear.

other than those sort of biological facts, I just AM. I am not feeling like a female at any point. I’m just being me.

I don’t know what I feels like for any other woman or man inside their head any more than I know what is going on inside my dog’s head.

100%

Any biological male who ‘understands himself to be a woman’ is narrowing what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. He is saying feminine men cannot be men and vice versa.

Is @Tandora gojng to actually debate anything other than whether they or other posters are “respectful “?
I posted upthread - abridged question are people who argue/believe/propose that self-identification is a reality that sexed beings can engage in to change sex an inherently ableist position (because people without intellectual capacity, or who are nonverbal) cannot self-identify must be “outside” of what it means to be human (if the proposition is that only self-identification makes one a sex (or a gender)? (Answer btw is “yes”). I’d love to have this debated PLEASE

I wonder how @Tandora feels about the trans rights activists who have threatened people who disagree with them with rape and death. Is that acceptable? What about the t-shirts with fake blood and slogans about bashing TERFs? Pictures of bats with barbed wire wound round them?

I agree that we should be moving away from stereotypes and I definitely agree that we can't change sex. I am a woman and I don't have long hair, don't wear dresses or make-up, dislike many of the things that women are 'supposed' to like. However, I think I feel like a woman even though I'm not sure what that means. Maybe it's just because I've been conditioned that way, even though my parents tried hard not to. Your comment has given me a lot to think about - thank you.

@Tandora if you get chance to come back to the thread, please could you look at my suggested definitions of sex, gender, diversity and gender non-conforming for the purposes of discussion on this thread.

Happy for you to suggest changes but, as per one of your comments on the first page (I think), getting to a common understanding of what these words me is a key starting point to any further meaningful discussion.

Thanks.