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

[polypostwonder]

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.

The reality of my life.

In other words the postmodernist "my reality". Have you spotted that empirical reality is also respected here?

You have a right to protection under GR in the Equality Act, based on what you have told us. That protection does not extend to sex-based protection as a woman. You might well not wish to undergo the stress and publicity of that GR protection should you ever suffer illegal discrimination, but the law provides for that protection. Proving that you have "reassigned your gender" must be feasible.

He's rejected and left behind his manhood (not a euphemism!) so he can't understand you even from a male perspective. Though sadly it matters less for men, it's still offensive and unhelpful when women claim to be men, for the same reason that it removes the connotations and full meaning of "man".

you know you are causing women distress

To be fair, PPW is causing women who he doesn't know distress at the thought that he and people like him might be in female spaces without them realising, by writing on this forum. But he cannot control other men and the solution that women want from him (other than to stop writing on the forum telling them what he is doing) comes at considerable personal cost.

It's entirely possible that at 5ft 4, having been surgically altered as a teenager, after more than 4 decades on hormone treatment, and more than 4 decades fully immersed in a life lived being recognised as a woman, that his actual presence in a female only space would not raise a single eyebrow.

I do think PPW is very rare but also in a very difficult situation. After 40 years, women are suddenly asking him to split from his female friends/colleagues/acqaintances, who all believe he is female, and peel off to the disabled. Where he is going to upset another group of people who think he shouldn't be there and have to field questions from all sides about why he's done that. I don't think it is a reasonable request to ask him after all this time to use the men's facilities presenting entirely as a woman, and that certainly would require him outing himself to everyone.

I don't think PPW is in any way a good representive for the trans lobby demand to use female spaces. If we take him at his word, we genuinely wouldn't know. Probably not even if he stripped off in front of us. He doesn't have and never has had the hormones that create male aggression, or most of the physique built by male hormones and especially puberty. He doesn't have a penis, he's the size of an average woman. He's no more threat to women than a woman, and probably quite a bit less threat than many women.

I hate the way he uses "clever" arguments about his own life, which is far removed from the lives of those transitioning more recently, to support demands that would allow obvious males with male genitalia into women's spaces. I'm grateful that the law has now been clarified to enable us to challenge such men, but I doubt @polypostwonder is among the people we would find a threat or challenge.

Unfortunately @polypostwonder made decisions as a teenager that have consequences. And one of those is that he can’t come into women’s single sex spaces in the U.K. he never should have been in them in the first place, and he definitely can’t come into women’s spaces now.

plenty of people make decisions as a teenager that they don’t fully understand the consequences of. I’m sure that when I decided to carry on with a pregnancy aged 15, I didn’t really have a clue of the long term consequences of that decision.

I don’t believe that the law, any law, should be broken. I don’t even speed before someone pops up with that. Campaign to change it if you don’t like it but in the meantime obey the law.

@polypostwonder has proven on this thread that he doesn’t care a toot for the distress he causes women and disregards their consent. I’m still reeling from that. The logic conclusion of his position is rape. And I just can’t get my head around that a rape victim would take that stance.

edit to add clarity- my distress isnt just that there might be a man in a single sex spaces it’s that that man cares so little for my consent that he doesn’t take it under his notice. And that triggers my trauma around my rape. And he doesn’t give a fuck, and actually called me excessively triggered.

So why should women give him grace and understanding. He needs to learn actions have consequences. If that makes him uncomfortable and sad… that’s a him problem. He’s made it very clear he has no respect or empathy for women, so why should women show him those things? Why should women “be the bigger person”? Abd if we let hi. In, who else gets to come in? Isla Bryson? Karen white? Katie Dolowski? It’s either all TIMS or none.

I believe the only places he's actually upsetting any women is writing oh this forum and anywhere else that women hear him say the same things.

When he keeps his mouth shut and uses women's facilities I don't believe that he is actually upsetting any women in that moment.

I don't believe that we have any option but to "allow" him to use female spaces because he is one of the tiny minority of female identifying trans people who genuinely can't be told apart from a woman.

I intensely dislike the fact that he uses his own experiences to justify obvious males being in female spaces. I despise his inability to empathise with how women feel while also claiming to be one.

I suspect he gets a lot of fun out of the reactions on this forum.

Why is he not expected to obey the law?

He is expected to.

How do you propose to make him?

Pickpockets rob you by stealth. Are you saying we should make pickpocketing legal because no one saw them do it ? What about Internet scamming? I mean no one “sees” them do it, so by your logic that’s ok too?

So hes no better then any other law breaker. The answer is not to accept that.

once we start saying we are going to accept any sort of law breaking, especially that which involves boundaries of women and girls, thats a slippery slope.

I’ve said before. I intend to do this and record them and tell them im doing so and report the venue. The problem is that poly doesn’t give a fuck and is going to come in anyway. But stealthing is a crime and I think using opposite sex facilities answering provision should be too.

I totally agree. Are there any other men you believe should be allowed to break the law @Imdunfer ?

That was supposed to say and provisions.

I dont think trans people are trying to convince us, as much as they are trying to convince themselves and each other. They construct an excuse for every scenario.

In single sex spaces, like public toilets with only trust as gatekeeping, they pass.

In social situations, no one who knew them before the transition. No old friends to misgender.

In medical settings, like hospital wards and visits to the GP, they are woman with a DSD or a medical condition. And the surgery on their penis and testicles is undetectable.

Their id will protect them from being sent to male prisons.

They can easily avoid professional sports and single sex spaces where the gatekeeping is more intense. Because these are restricted for most women anyway.

Even if they haven't reached these levels yet, they seem achievable to them. Just take the hormones as soon as possible, have surgery, voice training and change id.

But if all or any of this is a reality, why would women care? We genuinely wouldn't notice, we'd think they would lose male aggression and trust them with our daughters. The TRA MPs would talk of the impossibility to detect rather than the humiliation of being asked.

“I doubt polypostwonder is among the people we would find a threat or challenge.”

I don’t agree.

Any male person who has shown he has no ability to respect the boundaries of female people in the way this poster has is not a person to not be wary of. Considering that the Olympic committee reviewed the evidence and made a decision to blanket exclude all male people with transgender identities who had even been on puberty blockers, and the studies now looking at genetics vs testosterone, I also don’t dismiss that a male person who has a shorter build than average male people still won’t pose a physical risk.

I don’t take someone’s say so that it is true. And if they have already shown they cannot speak truthfully about their sex category, why the fuck would anyone believe them?

A male who cannot respect female people’s needs is exactly the people who do pose a threat and challenge to female people.

Also, the belief that the fundamental thing that makes men and women different is how we think (the belief that caused PPW to try become a superficial facsimile of a human woman in the first place), the belief that the female half of the species does not deserve its own unique linguistic, social, political or legal identity and voice, and the belief that women's single sex provisions, whether physical spaces or social, sportign or cultural opportunities, should do double duty as comfort resources for any man who feels threatened or misunderstood by other other men are all incredibly damaging to women, not to mention roundly insulting.

Whether PPW and his ilk, should they truly exist as he describes them, post an immediate physical threat to women in our spaces is so far from the point it's laughable.

Women either exist in our own right or matter in our own right or we don't. We either have a good case for single sex provisions, or we don't.

As soon as you decide even just one man "might as well be in a women's spaces" because of how he thinks or how he looks or because effectively his need is greater than ours you have not only made a mockery of women, you have also utterly undermined the basis on which these spaces, rights and opportunities can be justified in the first place.

I might - might - be preared to consider the "women's spaces should be opened to very vulnerable men as well" argument if it was made honestly, but "women's spaces shoudl be opened to a subset of vulnertab le men because they are actually women as well" - absolutely not. The "safety" argument is a Trojan horse to sneak in the idea that these men are legitimately actually women.

the wheedling is so creepy. a man who can't take no for an answer makes my flesh creep

'what about if I was really sad if I couldn't use the ladies?'

'what about if I pretend that everyone who knows me can't tell my real sex?'

'what about if I serve up a load of twaddle about how being a woman is a state of mind?'

'what about if I just say I'll barge into women's spaces anyway?'

<shudder>

I suspect more than half of what he writes is fantasy. I am unconvinced that people who meet him can't tell he's a man

All the people posing me further questions and making further points are starting from a point of belief that there are no males presenting as females who they would not recognise as males.

I do not agree that this is the case, and therefore we have no common ground for further discussion of the points I've made about male access to female spaces.

Please, though, stop suggesting that I have said the law keeping men out of women's spaces should not exist. I have repeatedly stated that I am pleased that it makes it easier to challenge obvious men in women's spaces.

Yes.

And we have been writing post like this directly in reaction to that specific poster since February.

And it just keeps cycling around. This is just the weekly (seems like it) cycle. It is all just wheedling or trying to find the right philosophical aspect to get past boundaries.

Honestly I think it all is. I think it's that activist thing of genuinely believing someone like this could exist, and therefore considering it legitimate to create an imaginary example should an actual real life example inexplicably not happen to be to hand.

Kind of reminds me of the ways people try to find scientific basis for biblical miracles - always rests on a multitude of rare occurances each of which individually could maybe happen, but all of which happening together to produce exactly the right result would be so unlikely that itself would still be a miracle.

fair enough

I think you're wrong though. I've yet to see a role playing man where I couldn't tell. I mean Blair White has had a shit tonne of surgery and is gorgeous. In still photos I'd 100% read him as female, but I just need to see him walk or hear him speak to know he's a man.