Town Vs Country and believing in GI.

[CassOle]

I was reading the posts of one of our delightful ploppers, and they commented something like 'what world do you live in? The more I read, the more I wondered if they had ever spent time lambing (or similar). Or whether they were someone who had always lived in a town/city.

The fashion choices are all ones that fall away to nothing when you are checking your animals are OK, have water and forage during a long, wet, cold winter. You (regardless of your sex) need proper outdoor clothing for the weather.

The 'sex is bimodal' idea is just stupid when you are selecting Rams, having the vet scan pregnant ewes, and working hard when the ewes are lambing.

So, I'm wondering whether where you live (and what you do) has any impact on how beliveable gender identity ideology is to an individual?

I expect TransBiologist and TransVet will be popping by sometime soon.

I like to imagine there’s a secret society of trans shepherds

How would they sort the wethers from the ewes? It would be very triggering.

There are some trans activists pushing an agenda of course. Just as there are some people on the GC side of things who work tirelessly to promote what they think is right (for example, Kelly Jay Keen, Helen Joyce). However, these people aren't the norm.

The average person is not an activist, whether they are trans or not. For most people the trans argument is pretty far down the priority list.

There's been a local non-secret one here for years - he wears ordinary work clothes when working in the fields but dresses in female clothing otherwise.

He’s missing a trick

Thanks for your interesting post.

Just a quick pernickity one to say that hermaphrodite is generally not a term used anymore for humans because there has been no human with both male and female reproductive organs (the pathways towards developing male gonads and developing female gonads are mutually repressive so you ends up with only one or the other) and it was causing confusion whereby people thought that's what it could/did mean.

Usually what was actually meant was, say, having testicles (primary male sex characteristic) but secondary female characteristics (in extreme cases, including a uterus) which might be caused by a total failure to process the testosterone produced by the testicles or failure to convert to DHT downstream so that testosterone works on the body as normal but doesn't cause a penis to develop / the testicles to descend fully or at all. Those are male disorders of sexual development and the human body is absolutely fascinating in that way, but they don't make a male the opposite sex (or an 'inbetween' sex).

The only condition including tissue of both ovaries and testicles is ovotesticular disorder which they used to call "true hermaphroditism" but again, gives the false impression that there are working sets of both gonads when in fact we are talking about streak tissue of one or both (approx. 500 ever known cases).

Just for interest.

I'm very rural, there is a tiny village but mostly we are dairy farms, forestry, and so on.

Despite being in Canada I would say most people here think GI is a load of tosh.

It's tricky though to parse it out. The area is very Tory, and like a lot of rural areas there are a lot of old people and not many younger ones. Though I would say that the younger people here are less enthralled to GI than in the city.

In general people don't have much time for "woke" politics. They are what I'd call old fashioned "small-c" conservatives in that they tend to let people be, not stick their noses in, they help out their neighbours, even if they think they are weird. The main people they object to is people who throw their weight around but don't contribute to community life. But they also expect others to mind their own business.

They don't particularly care about gender non-conformity though, there are plenty of women farmers and woods types.

That’s interesting, because I wear ordinary work clothes almost every day. I occasionally wear a skirt and almost never a dress, in fact I’m clearing out dresses . Am female.

Does he paint his toe nails? That was the clue for me, about someone I knew. Open toed men’s sandals.

iv no issue with that at all.

No-one round here is bothered, he's from a local family and just regarded as a bit odd. I think this chap gives non-locals more of a surprise - but he's been around for years as well.
https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/17392940.naked-man-reported-police-two-women-spotted-rempstone-forest/

Not my observation at all. I'm lifelong big city. Most friends and acquaintances I know that believe in GI are from countryside or small town backgrounds, regardless of where they live now.

I've wondered whether it's simply that they experienced less sexual assault and harassment when younger? Or perhaps it's in reaction to negative stereotypes about rural people, to become so vocally "inclusive" (new meaning of the word, obvs. As ever, people with disabilities remain somewhat sidelined).

Another slight correlation I've noticed is GI believers either choosing not to have kids or having them significantly later in life. So, if female, their careers have been far less impeded. Whereas experiencing maternity discrimination as a younger mother can be a radicalising moment.

The other thing though, is most GI believers I've met hold some distinctly terfy opinions. They just either can't, or won't, see it.

I worked on a farm growing up and it changed my view of sex and gender quite a lot. When lambing, we always had a male, female, 'not sure' pen as it wasn't always easy to tell the sex of some lambs. We also had 'lesbian' cows and a bull who had to be destroyed because it was exhibiting female traits and was also just 'hanging with the other cows' rather than mating, so it was sadly commercially not viable. So for me, I saw LGBTQ+ in the animal kingdom, which made things around me such as homophobia (it was when Section 28 was in play) even harder to understand. So i think I took that into my adult life and just realised we aren't all in neat boxes so may as well celebrate that rather than make it sound bad or nasty.

How do you tell a cow is lesbian given - as I understand it - mounting other cows is a normal sign of being in heat? And cows don't afaik pair up.

Lesbian cows is a cute idea, but in evolutionary terms it seems a more likely adaptation in animals that forage or hunt for food where having a few spare adults can help survival of the wider genetic line.

Why were you sexing and separating lambs during lambing?

We have always just numbered them and penned them with their mothers? Castrating (and tail docking) with an elastrator where testicles visible.

I have never seen lambs split by sex during lambing, ever?

And what is a female trait in a cow?!

How are you in any way attributing 'not mating' to 'female bovine traits'

And there's a healthy market in bovine artifical insemination so no need to destroy a healthy bull of decent lineage at all?

Someone is extracting the urine.

Doh! And I completely fell for it. So hard to pick up tone online.

It is hard to tell. They could be trying a 'gotya'. However, you want the lambs to stay with their Mum (unless there is a serious reason why this cannot happen). Splitting brother and sister lambs into different pens rather ruins that.

Surely the existence of homosexuality and disorders of sexual development is irrelevant to any argument about gender identity, regardless of whether in humans or animals?

As far as I could work it out while I lurked, it was like believing that the sun would come up and set in the evening. Men were men, women were women. What was there to debate about it? One interesting viewpoint from a mum was that it was cruel to let people pretend to be something they weren't because reality wouldn't change.

I live in a tiny village half an hour from any larger center. It is a lovely village so many of the houses are second homes or now permanent homes of London escapees. Of the ones I know, most of the moneyed incomers believe or nod towards GI. Believe it or 'just be kind'.

Of course I don't go about canvassing opinions but where I do know, most others have no time for it. Many are farmers but there are a variety of jobs, education, backgrounds.

We are a tiny village but we do have some council housing. We have had two cases of men who claim to be women housed here by the council -- not locals. I mean...what are the chances?

I appreciate your post is directed at the OP and you've already had a response to it. I was on the Guardian thread that inspired this exploration of "what world do you live in?" (perhaps you were too?) - but I'm back to my normal bonfirey self on this thread**

Firstly, I think it was a great opening question/theory posed by the OP so I'll give my own thoughts on it before picking up on your points below. @CassOle I personally don't think it makes a difference whether someone is exposed to lambing (or similar) or has always lived in the town/city. Gender identity belief seems to be the default setting in centre or centre left circles regardless, perhaps because most people don't really think about these things much and take things like "sex change operation" at face value. I'm a centre left (probably liberal TBH) type and it was my exposure to the impact of gender identity belief that made me realise I no longer believe that everyone has a gender identity. I think it takes some level of impact exposure in a way that feels personal (it doesn't have to be personal e.g. a non-sporty woman can feel pissed off that women's sports are being destroyed without being impacted herself) for people to question whether they believe in it or not. I suspect exposure to its impact is not directly related to town v country. Also on the lambing point, plenty of medical professionals seem to be fully signed up to gender identity belief, despite its cognitive dissonance with biological fact... so I don't think that it helps to have a first hand experience of animal biology any more than human biology.

Anyway to the points on this comment:

by "ploppers" you mean "person who doesn't agree with me" (rude, but ok)

A plopper is someone who posits an argument on a thread - often a shit one with no substance - but never comes back when challenged on it. Generally, they are putting forward TRA points.

You wondered for some reason if this person who didn't agree with you had ever done any lambing or whether they lived in a town/city (never mind that the two aren't mutually exclusive, or that many rural people have never done any lambing either)

Yes. It was a reasonable point to wonder, as per my comment to CassOle above. You're right that the two aren't mutually exclusive, but that doesn't stop it being a reasonable thought to test out.

You then talked about fashion choices. I'd love it if you could explain this one because it was baffling - how are the clothes one might need to wear when working with animals relevant to a belief in "gender ideology" or trans status or anything related? Do you think there's something in the wellies that would cause an allergy or something?

I took the fashion point to be about whether exposure to the reality of sex differences in a farm setting (and the reality that fashion is pointless in this regard) means someone is less likely to be invested in a belief that everyone has a gender identity. It's a reasonable idea, as the more grounded someone is in reality, the less likely it is that they will look to a belief to explain the many mysteries of life. However, I think you're right that fashion is probably a red herring here: as you said in your next point, there are some very glam farmers who wear all sorts of things when not working on the farm.

You then announced for some bizarre reason that the bimodality of sex is irrelevant when separating breeding stock - in fact it couldn't be more relevant to this activity.

Sex is not bimodal. Therefore, its "bimodality" is completely irrelevant because its bimodality doesn't exist. This video debunks the bimodality point very well: https://theparadoxinstitute.org/videos/is-sex-bimodal

You wondered whether where you live has an impact on belief in "gender ideology". I assume you would include anyone who is trans in your bucket of people who believe in "gender ideology" which is why I inferred from this you thought there weren't any trans people in rural locations or industries.

I would assume the same thing, because if someone says that they are trans, they would have to believe that they have a gender identity. Specifically, they would have to believe that they have a gender identity that differs from their sex (whereas those who describe themselves as "cis" would believe that they have one that matches their sex).

Admittedly, this is a tricky one - personally I don't actually think there is any such thing as "gender ideology", I think it's become a buzzword like "gay agenda" in the 90s intended to make the existence of a group of humans sound more sinister or organised than it actually is.

Perhaps you don't think "gender ideology" is a thing because to you (as a believer that everyone has a gender identity), it's just how you view reality. Similar to how a Christian's reality is that god exists. The main difference here is that Christians recognise that not everyone shares their belief, so they accept that other people's reality doesn't include god existing - and they don't force people to say he does. If you don't see your belief as a belief - if instead you see it as true, provable fact - this could explain why you find the OP's position tricky. It could also explain why you might find non-believers like me annoying or unkind when we say no to society organising itself around your belief e.g. allowing anyone who "identifies as" a woman into women's sports and spaces. That "identity" holds no meaning whatsoever for people who don't believe that everyone has a gender identity, so I'm not going to be forced (or more likely coerced through shaming, like being called a bigot etc) into accepting that it does. By all means live according to your own belief, and it's great that we live in a country where people can, just don't expect me to pretend that I believe it too. And yes, it is sinister and organised when enforced/coerced belief is pushed in schools, hospitals and other institutions as if it's factual. As for a "gay agenda", if that means equal rights for gay people that's good with me. If it means more rights or the taking away of others' rights, no thank you.

But I accept that you believe there's such a thing, so perhaps you could explain what you meant by this category of people and who you'd include in it, if not trans people?

As above. The category of people who believe in "gender ideology" is those who believe themselves to have a gender identity.

** to anyone else who was on the Guardian thread, I'm tempted to call this a detransition 🙃

Edited for typo

The farmer still using their ‘dead name’ was literal violence and they died. Poor sheep.

Rural here - what is GI? (Serious Question)

Gender identity - the idea that whether you’re a woman or a man is about feelings rather than biology.