Any recommended genderist writers?

[bonfireoftheverities]

"He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that." - John Stuart Mill

This is something I've tried to keep in mind over the last half dozen or so years since I heard TWAW, thought "What?" and fairly quickly found FWR. So I've made sure to read as much as I can take from those who truly believe that men can be women, or if they don't actually believe it (because how can you, deep down?), desperately want it to be true. I say as much as I can take because after a while you've seen and heard it all before, and it never starts being convincing.

The latest pile of nonsense I dove into is this: The End of Trans Rights in the UK Is the Start of Democratic Collapse. Dear god, that almost made my brain melt. The links alone show you that he never strays outside an idiotic bubble (Helen Webberley being the first I clicked into).

Is there anyone you can recommend who makes their case without lying and relying on liars?

Thanks for proving my point. The term used by Dr Upton is "biologically female" which is a vague term that doesn't explain how. Again, she's probably referring to bi modal sex.

Biologically female means that the individual produces large gametes (or will/ should/did produce them).

How are you defining biologically female, then?

I honestly don't see how this is vague unless this is a Humpty-Dumpty situation (words mean what I say they mean).

Once again, sex categories (male and female) are binary.

So, @EmilyinEverton , which books and authors do you recommend to cure us of our dreadful terfy ways?

So far, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, I think

I think Julia Serrano's website is very impressive. She's also a scientist so her explanations are very rigorous.

But again I'm not sure the best writer in the world will help if false priors are applied.

So Em, care to define the words 'biologically' and 'female' for us?

Your points are not clear to the class.

Julia Serrano is a poor choice IMO (unless you want to strengthen Terfy feelings).

Maybe Em is a double agent?

There's biologically female as in a reproductive female.
There's biologically female as bimodal. As in sex traits produce an ambiguous result or a result that reflects how society distinguishes females via secondary sex traits.

Dr Upton a reproductive male by birth as altered her secondary sex traits & presentation with the characteristics that society in everyday practice uses to distinguish males from females.

Pass With Care by Cooper Leigh Bombadier. It won't convince you that humans can change sex (but I've never met a post-op trans person "in real life" who believed that either). What it might illuminate is how someone who desperately wanted to and felt they should be able to "be male" when born female understood and experienced the context of "sex changes" in the 1980s through the 2020, when the book was published.

So, you are using the same phrase to mean two different things?

That's not confusing at all.

Sorry Em. Your argument is weak and unconvincing.

Ewan Forbes was not trans, he had a DSD. His family were really upset about Playdon's misrepresentation.

https://www.voidifremoved.co.uk/p/the-curious-case-of-ewan-forbes

Pre-Corbett, transsexuals used to just pretend to have a DSD and get a friendly doctor to sign off so they could change their birth certificates using a legal mechanism that was never meant for them. I was surprised to learn their appropriation of 'intersex' went that far back.

Because it does mean two different things that's a fact. Reproductive sex & sex traits are two different phenomenas that are both biological that both produce outcomes that distinguish males from females.

Let's not forget the 'sex' of an individual in essence is about what characteristics distinguish females from males & there are two ways.

I would recommend Christine Burns - Pressing Matters for insight into how we ended up with the GRA

Bollocks.

But this is just a sloppy - or wilful - failure to distinguish being actually 'male' or 'female' from looking conventionally "masculine" or "feminine". A masculine-looking woman doesn't have two different sexes, she has one and looks rather like the other. "Looks like" isn't the same as "is". Nobody seemed to have any trouble in understanding the difference between those two concepts before.

You could tick all the boxes for bimodally masculine traits (deep voice, height, broad shoulders, strength, tendency to be hairy etc) and still be the female mother of five children. Anyone who mistook you for a man would simply be mistaken.

It just feels like a tendentious attempt to muddy the waters of something that isn't actually that complicated, in the interests of a few people who are desperate to be classified as other than they are. It's not sophistication, it's obfuscation. Like buying a cut-glass necklace and trying to sell it on as diamond. If you do manage to fool anybody, they don't suddenly have a diamond necklace; you have committed fraud.

Is this muddlemindedness why some people no longer seem able to get their head round the idea of a girl with short hair?

Look, you can dismiss how people socially distinguish females from males in practice all you like as being illegitimate but that doesn't take away from what actually happens. And what actually happens is most of the time people rely on secondary sex traits & presentation more associated to a sex that gametal & chromosomal tests. Definitions rely on social usage which includes all methods of usage.

But then what you’re saying is that society would see non passing TIM as male then. So you’re only a woman if you pass as one? Seems rather transphobic to me but you do you boo..

From a trans person's perspective 'passing' matters for this reason hence the importance of access to body modification for societal acceptance. Ultimately they are just trying to fit their disposition into the prevailing societal construct.

Yes, I recall Serrano was the one who moaned about lesbians not being sufficiently welcoming when he tried to chat them up.

no, you said sex was reliant on how society perceived sex traits, so you’ve just confirmed all non passing TIM are male and will only be seen as male if they perform extreme body modifications. Wow! That’s rather a hot take and I think very transphobic of you. You seem to be saying that we do not believe that people are who they say they are, but people are what others perceive them to be. The exact opposite of self ID as you are relying on others to tell you what you are.

"chat them up" = find common ground

That's its always a perverse sexual twist is certainly quite the tell.

Maybe someone's arguments might be clearer if they were aware of the common English word "pretending", which avoids the needs for paragraphs full of "prevailing social construct"s and "presentation more associated"s.

That really does seem to be what it boils down to: pretending not not understand what pretending is.

But why did this bloke think lesbians owed him any kind of “welcome”? Why did he as a male think he had any common ground with a bunch of homosexual women?

I said society goes secondary sex traits to distinguish sex so if a trans woman exhibits obvious male secondary sex traits they will be categorised as a trans woman rather than a cis woman. IE their reproductive sex is male.

You seem to be saying that we do not believe that people are who they say they are, but people are what others perceive them to be.

Again you are confusing two separate issues now which are sex & gender. Does society believe in gender & trans people when they say they identify more with the opposite gender associated with their sex that legitimises their trans identities? Certainly large parts do.

What are male secondary sex traits?

I don't believe in gender, how can I when no one can define it. How do I know if I have one when I don't know what it is?