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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

The liminality of sex perception, sex-based spaces and bodily autonomy.

1000 replies

polypostwonder · 20/05/2026 15:31

This thread continues a discussion between BonfireLady (sorry, I wanted to tag you but the system says your username doesn't currently exist) and I on biological sex vs perceived/observed sex in https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5530455-us-to-open-worlds-first-childrens-detransition-clinic-texas-hospital-to-offer-free-services-reversing-the-effects-of-gender-affirming-treatments?page=10&reply=152406258

She has requested I answer the following two questions:

  1. would you consider that a viable way forward is for you to self-exclude from women's spaces and instead either advocate for third spaces for anyone to use (e.g. unisex facilities in addition to single-sex) or (probably your least preferred) use the men's?
  2. would you support a restriction on anyone under 18 (or 25?) making permanent changes to their body, to match it with their perception of their "gender"? Similar to other restrictions on permanent body changes.

I believe I have previously answered them both. My answers today are superficially the same, but I have better thought out my answers (maybe?). To do this though, I need to share some assumptions.

In the previous thread, I believe there was somewhat of an agreement on the following statements:

  1. People can identify a man when dressed in clothes 'traditionally associated' with women. Clothes are superficial to sex.
  2. People look at other people and perceive their sex. People are not identifying the gametes/sry/chromosomes/other unobservable immutable biologic factor inside another person.
  3. Assumptions about sex are made based on a person’s sex characteristics amongst other observable cues.
  4. Pretty much every person in the whole world "exists within the expectations of sex categories". Very rarely it's unclear.
  5. If a person exists within the expectations of sex categories, then socially they are treated as that sex whether they wish to be or not.

Building on those statements and previous discussion, some additional thoughts:

  1. ‘Biological sex’ is defined by a person’s gametes/chromosomes/sry/other unobservable immutable biologic factor. This cannot be changed.
  2. ’Observable sex’ is based upon the perception of sex characteristics rather than known biological sex and influences the placement and treatment of people in social sex categories. Perception is not under control of the observed, nor is it a demand of others.
  3. Observable sex can be heavily influenced by biological sex and sex-based function. But sex-based function is not a requirement for the perception of sex.
  4. Women’s rights are a cultural accommodation to rebalance access to society and ensure health, fair treatment, safety and/or dignity. Not all women require or access every right, but these rights are a vital benefit to women as a class.
  5. Users of a culturally defined space for members of one sex may feel comfort, privacy or protection through separation from non-users. But all users share an equal right to feel comfort, privacy or protection.
  6. Misogyny is not biologically based. It is a prejudice directed at women’s observable sex. Sexism can be biologically directed, but it can also be directed at members of an observable sex.
  7. Sex realists believe every person should live and be treated by society according to their biological sex, no exceptions.
  8. Trans people have a wide range of beliefs and goals. They do not share a single motivation.
  9. Better quality research should be done with trans people of all ages.

I think BonfireLady is correct in saying each of us sees the other's "belief" as non-sensical and our own as position as factual. I'm hoping we can discuss this from a somewhat sensical space.

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ArabellaScott · 29/05/2026 18:25

polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 17:36

Trans women are just one homogenous manly group of men who ever maned.

They are men. Without exception. It's the one defining feature that unites them all.

FlirtsWithRhinos · 29/05/2026 18:26

polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 17:36

Trans women are just one homogenous manly group of men who ever maned.

They are not a homogenous group, but they all have in common the fact of being adult human males - "men.

That of course is "men" in the original and still most meaningful sense of that word for the vast majority of humans who do not think biological sex is less significant that "a feeling I personally align to my ideas about what most people of a certain biological sex feel like and consider to be the authoriative truth even when others are just as cetain as I am that it is not"

GreyskySexRealistsky · 29/05/2026 18:27

FlirtsWithRhinos · 29/05/2026 18:14

Exactly. HUGE logical gap. Wonder believes he feels like "all the other women" and yet also says he can't know how anyone else feels.

Not the women here on FWR. The other women. The nice women.

BernardBlacksMolluscs · 29/05/2026 18:27

some times it is instructive to remind myself how utterly irrational people who want to role play as members of the opposite sex are. there is literally no reasoning with them on this subject

Taztoy · 29/05/2026 18:30

I was sent an email by mnhq when I challenged the deletion of a description of my rape.

it said that my rape description was too upsetting for others to read.

as a result, I have never described my rape since in any detail because I obey the rules.

irs interesting that the trans woman does not see being deleted when discussing their rape in the same way and continue to describe their rape

Pingponghavoc · 29/05/2026 18:38

polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 16:55

Can you imagine how they feel?

I can imagine all sorts of feelings, none of which is really what another person feels.

You then, by design or accident, moved abroad and have lied constantly to friends, colleagues, employers, the medical profession. Mostly without any need.

This is moralisation by people who are incapable of understanding what I've been through. As mentioned in previous posts, I've moved countries several times. You characterise my life as a lie because my existence is impossible under your beliefs. I am just living. There is no grand scheme to deceive.

I'm sure you see it as having a driven personality, but if any if it is true, you are living in a permanent fantasy, not considering how those around you feel.

I see it as a fight against a system that believed I had a purpose based on how I looked. I am not allowed to have experiences that contradict gender critical beliefs. Everyone else around me has their own ideas about my life, which do not reflect those beliefs I read on mumsnet. Believe me when I say I'm tired of talking about me, but every time I try to say "that's not true" and share why I have 15 posts telling me that it is untrue and berating me for talking about my life.

Can you imagine how you would feel if it turns out everyone around you did know, but were lying or humouring you?

More than 40 years of lying and humouring would probably feel extremely invalidating and shatter my self image and understanding of my place in the world. But, this is already the assumption of mumsnet.

More than 40 years of lying and humouring would probably feel extremely invalidating and shatter my self image and understanding of my place in the world.

Why cant you put yourself in your friends shoes and understand how they will feel if they found out you have been lying for so long to them?

murasaki · 29/05/2026 18:41

Pingponghavoc · 29/05/2026 18:38

More than 40 years of lying and humouring would probably feel extremely invalidating and shatter my self image and understanding of my place in the world.

Why cant you put yourself in your friends shoes and understand how they will feel if they found out you have been lying for so long to them?

He doesn't seem to get that he's been lying for ages, does he. It's revolting behaviour.

Pingponghavoc · 29/05/2026 18:54

What a life an ideal passing transexual needs to live?

Everyone is supportive of trans apart for GCers, yet they have to lie to everyone they know.

I cannot imagine the cunning needed to visit medical professionals for 40 years and get medication for a condition they do not have.

Catiette · 29/05/2026 19:27

PPW, I'm going to try a slightly different tack here.

I know GPs who have treated people who are, likely, in a similar position to you (obviously just brief and anonymous references to lifelong transexuals by intelligent professionals for whom I have deep respect). They always emphasise that such patients are a vanishingly small, even "once-in-a-career", minority, and express their concern for the challenges they face. I shared their concern then, and I still share this concern now. I wondered what it must be like then, and I still do now. I wondered how society could be changed to support such people, and I still do now.

In becoming gender critical, I haven't been "captured" by some niche ideology, or radicalised by Mumsnet, or whatever else. My views are much as they always were, really: I've always believed in empathetic accommodation of such individuals where possible.

But the political landscape around me has changed, and I've read widely on both sides of this debate and engaged in hour upon hour of conversations with, (hopefully) good-faith visitors like yourself. And as a result of this - of external forces and influences - my previously expansive "where possible" has been squeezed, brutally, into a regrettable fragment of what it was before. It no longer feels possible to me to give you what you want, because it asks too much - not just of me, but of women the world over; and because it takes too much - from research, from infrastructure, I'd even argue from your own demographic (and others who don't belong to it, but are swept up in it). From a personal but also a ruthlessly utilitarian, an ethical, and even a holistically empathetic perspective - all those - I just can't.

I notice that you've still not addressed my earlier monster-post, and several since, about the wider implications (again, the political, ethical and practical - on an historical and global scale) of leaving adult human females without a word of their own.

In my own posts on this, I've cited women's history - our clarity, continuity and ownership. I've examine the ongoing global oppression of women, with specific reference to the women in Afghanistan, with anecdotal evidence of what's at stake. The fact that women continue to be injured and die in their tens of thousands right here, in the UK, because of their ongoing invisibility in medicine and health and safety - before we even get to pregnancy and childbirth. Women's frighteningly recent acquisition of a political identity and voice, in the vote. Women's terrifyingly recent acquisition of physical autonomy in marriage - marital rape. The corruption of research studies seeking to mitigate physical harm to women by the shift in meaning of that word.

Other women on this thread have mentioned the slippery slope argument, referencing the now undeniable exploitation of our redefinition by AGPs and other dangerous males.

And behind all this has been a litany of shared experiences of individual women's trauma.

Prisons. Sports. The crippling terror of the women with PTSD in the toilet they thought was single sex. The life-changing disillusionment of the girls training 15 hours a week only to lose to a male. We all have our stories, and could fill at least as many posts with them as you have with your own. They're just as valid. And they're legion.

Are you really, truly arguing that, in all of the above - as you appeared to suggest in an earlier response to me - that "women" should be replaced by "adult human female"? Or that from now - the early 21st century - and forever after, any and all readers will somehow be able to recognise when accounts like all of mine above refer only to one "type" of women, and when it includes the other? That we should assume they will? That this is good enough for women?

I don't yet see from your posts how your determination to use our word is anything but what posters here are suggesting: a matter of urgent personal imperative. And if it is, please note: such deep-seated need is worth our empathy, and thought - and accommodation in wider society. But as long as posts like your own here also demonstrate a corresponding blindness to women's need in turn - on a personal, and political; historical and global scale; in our billions - they also demonstrate how dangerous it is for us to concede one inch in this matter at this time, even if we wish to do so. And, in this way, this movement's resistance to ceding women so much as a word of their own is harming you and your own - fatal flaw, Greek tragedy, it's all right here in this story.

Do you have arguments beyond the personal, that address these wider issues?

nicepotoftea · 29/05/2026 19:36

polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 17:10

Literally, no one cares. Gender critical people idealise a world that does, obsessively so. I am not responsible for your feelings or living within your value system.

I think most women would care if they lost the rights that depend on sex being defined in law.

I'm not talking specifically about single sex spaces, but more generally about discrimination law and provision of services.

Step 1: Make equality law incoherent (Greens, SNP, Nadia Whittome et al)
Step 2: Throw out equality law (Reform).

Women will always depend on a framework of rights that men don't need and , that make men's lives less comfortable and it will always be necessary to fight for them.

Catiette · 29/05/2026 19:42

nicepotoftea · 29/05/2026 19:36

I think most women would care if they lost the rights that depend on sex being defined in law.

I'm not talking specifically about single sex spaces, but more generally about discrimination law and provision of services.

Step 1: Make equality law incoherent (Greens, SNP, Nadia Whittome et al)
Step 2: Throw out equality law (Reform).

Women will always depend on a framework of rights that men don't need and , that make men's lives less comfortable and it will always be necessary to fight for them.

And that framework is largely invisible to most, in a society in which women enjoy ostensible, day-to-day equality, and women's history and oppression is given little attention, relatively speaking.

We all want it to be invisible, in a sense - it's terrifying to think how much we rely on it, after all. You don't see women's vulnerability even in the ass-kicking heroines of post-apocalyptic drama, when periods, pregnancy risk and death and our sheer physical vulnerability would constrain us in ways most now can barely imagine. Because why would you want to imagine how much our female bodies mean we rely on such frameworks?

Like the vote, this debate is abstract enough for its significance, and our immediate, concrete need, to be plausibly deniable on a superficial level.

Like the vote, this isn't actually the case, and the stakes are, instead, unimaginably high.

ArabellaScott · 29/05/2026 22:22

Catiette · 29/05/2026 19:42

And that framework is largely invisible to most, in a society in which women enjoy ostensible, day-to-day equality, and women's history and oppression is given little attention, relatively speaking.

We all want it to be invisible, in a sense - it's terrifying to think how much we rely on it, after all. You don't see women's vulnerability even in the ass-kicking heroines of post-apocalyptic drama, when periods, pregnancy risk and death and our sheer physical vulnerability would constrain us in ways most now can barely imagine. Because why would you want to imagine how much our female bodies mean we rely on such frameworks?

Like the vote, this debate is abstract enough for its significance, and our immediate, concrete need, to be plausibly deniable on a superficial level.

Like the vote, this isn't actually the case, and the stakes are, instead, unimaginably high.

Edited

Absolutely fuckin lutely.

We cannot identify out of our sex.

polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 22:28

Taztoy · 29/05/2026 18:04

I am very sorry that happened to you. I’m not allowed to describe my rape here.

surely that experience would make you more aware of not crossing a boundary? Make you more aware of lack of consent? Make you more determined to obey the law?

I am sorry that I traumatise you. This is nothing I personally control or can protect either of us from.

I don't use my trauma against others and I am not entering a trauma battle with you.

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murasaki · 29/05/2026 22:30

polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 22:28

I am sorry that I traumatise you. This is nothing I personally control or can protect either of us from.

I don't use my trauma against others and I am not entering a trauma battle with you.

You most certainly could try by not, as a male, going into female single sex spaces.

But you won't do that. Even though you could. There is something you could do, but you won't.

So give over. You know exactly what you're doing.

polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 22:30

ArabellaScott · 29/05/2026 18:15

I'm not disagreeing with you.

I'm saying that it would be surprising and unwise for medics to treat someone as if they were actually the opposite sex, because many issues are sex specific.

There are a lot of terrible decisions being made in the field of so-called 'gender care'. And have been for a long time.

Lili Elbe's horrific operations were all performed by doctors.

There was a lot of unknowns about human bodies and health care in the early 1900s.

In the 2020s, there are a lot of gender critical beliefs about trans people and healthcare and few of those beliefs are actual reality.

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polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 22:35

Imdunfer · 29/05/2026 17:57

This is priceless.

You want women to accept that "women" is a cultural concept including all female identified trans men, but you yourself won't tell them that you are one because they make you feel uncomfortable.

Ironically, you keep telling me how lucky I am as they did. You and they have no idea what price I paid as a child. You can understand what it feels like to be told by your school that they cannot protect you after an assault and your only option is to leave. And that it wouldn't be the first school you would be chased from.

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murasaki · 29/05/2026 22:39

Other people have been bullied at school. For things that are not based on a choice they made. Bullying is of course awful, and schools should protect from assault, but you are not alone in having experienced that. You are not special.

polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 22:42

SabrinaThwaite · 29/05/2026 17:51

Of course you do. Because you’re male and you’ve no idea how it feels to live with female biology.

The same female biology that defines us as women, and differentiates you as a male.

Because I just don't see a purpose in discussing my childhood with everyone because no one is obligated to share every detail about themselves in every interaction. Whether this is with a random woman making small talk or someone who is sexually harassing me.

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Taztoy · 29/05/2026 22:42

polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 22:28

I am sorry that I traumatise you. This is nothing I personally control or can protect either of us from.

I don't use my trauma against others and I am not entering a trauma battle with you.

You did and you do. The post was clear.

FlirtsWithRhinos · 29/05/2026 22:43

polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 22:35

Ironically, you keep telling me how lucky I am as they did. You and they have no idea what price I paid as a child. You can understand what it feels like to be told by your school that they cannot protect you after an assault and your only option is to leave. And that it wouldn't be the first school you would be chased from.

FFS.

Did you honestly not realise how many girls experience exactly that? How many girls find they are not protected, that they are expected to continue to share classrooms with boys who have belittled, abused or even raped them? Are you really so unaware of the real world of girls and women?

Ironically, the experience that you suggest no one else would understand is probably one of the ones that is closest to the experiences of actual women.

Taztoy · 29/05/2026 22:44

polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 22:35

Ironically, you keep telling me how lucky I am as they did. You and they have no idea what price I paid as a child. You can understand what it feels like to be told by your school that they cannot protect you after an assault and your only option is to leave. And that it wouldn't be the first school you would be chased from.

I do. So does my daughter.

lots of people have that experience. It’s not acceptable, but your experience is not unusual.

polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 22:45

FlirtsWithRhinos · 29/05/2026 22:43

FFS.

Did you honestly not realise how many girls experience exactly that? How many girls find they are not protected, that they are expected to continue to share classrooms with boys who have belittled, abused or even raped them? Are you really so unaware of the real world of girls and women?

Ironically, the experience that you suggest no one else would understand is probably one of the ones that is closest to the experiences of actual women.

Ironically, I have posted about experiences that I share with numerous friends only to be told by members here that I am appropriating women's experiences.

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Taztoy · 29/05/2026 22:46

polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 17:57

I missed this post.

I was fucking drugged and I was fucking unconscious. Jesus fucking christ.

This was weaponising your trauma. This right here. Towards me.

polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 22:49

Taztoy · 29/05/2026 22:46

This was weaponising your trauma. This right here. Towards me.

You posted "It’s stealthing. It’s the rape doesnt count if you were drugged and unconscious argument"

This is literally my experience that you are mocking. It was also the experience of the other women who were also attacked by the same men. It isn't a fucking side of an argument.

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FlirtsWithRhinos · 29/05/2026 22:52

polypostwonder · 29/05/2026 22:45

Ironically, I have posted about experiences that I share with numerous friends only to be told by members here that I am appropriating women's experiences.

Having experience in common with women does not make your experiences the experiences of a woman.

Not ironic. Except maybe in how you so desperately aspire to claim womanhood to make meaning of your own experiences yet miss the point of what womanhood actually means for those of us who are wonen.

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