Continuation of Polypostwonder thread

[Imdunfer]

Follow on from this thread

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5532352-the-liminality-of-sex-perception-sex-based-spaces-and-bodily-autonomy?page=39

For argument sake, I understand Blaire White to be a woman. This is independent of the knowledge she chose to only undergo cosmetic facial surgeries and breast augmentation, while retaining everything else.
I think I remember reading that she politically aligns 'right' and is politically vocal about being a male, living as a trans woman. I'm not 100% sure, though. It's not a way that I could understand living, but it is financially lucrative in her case.

There is a person who declares themselves to be male.

That person chooses to live presenting as a female.

In spite of their self declaration as a male, complete with male genitals, you understand that they are a woman.

And you ascribe their understanding of themselves being male, at least partly, to financial motives.

This is either monumentally arrogant or monumentally stupid thinking, or possibly both. Or perhaps you just like playing with a largely female forum and seeing how many feathers you can ruffle.

One thing is for sure, and that is that I don't think anything you write on this subject from now on is going to be of any value to read.

"Attack you like a virus"

The most perceptive thing I've ever seen you say. The correct metaphor for this situation is indeed that what you are experiencing is an immune response to invasion by a harmful agent.

The agent may not be knowingly harming the host. It may just be living its best life in the place it feels most at home. Nevertheless, the host recognises the threat and the immune defense is triggered.

Because at the end of the day, it's not really up to the invading agent to decide whether their actions are causing harm, it's up to the host.

This is where I am personally disturbed where this culture war has ended up.

This post is evidence not of a concern about children, but a fear or hatred of trans people who mature as adults and are unobservable as trans people in the world.

Trans children exist. The best outcome for us is to receive medical treatment as minors.

Yes, there have been some children who afterward regret that they requested and received treatments. They should be listened to and learned from so no others regret choices made in the future. They are relatively low in number and are not a valid reason to withhold treatment from others.

You're a poor little misunderstood woman only deserving of our kindness and sympathy.

Only you aren't. You're a disingenuous word twister who won't accept that when we use the word woman you are not included in the group we are referring to and when you use the word woman mean that you are included in the group you are referring to. So your answers can never be trusted.

Even mythical "passing" trans people are not born with their transition in place. They born one sex and at some point decide to transition to [what they believe is] the other.

So before the decision to transition, there is a belief that their mind is not compatible with being the opposite sex.

That is the issue even with the mythical "passing" trans person.

If we accept they are "really" the opposite sex rather than people with disordered ideas about their actual sex we accept that some minds are appropriate for one sex and not the other.

That is an abhorrent belief for society to fall into line behind.

It's only sonething you could consider "transphobia" if you see transphobia as inseparable from anti-sexism.

Where have I lied?

While I admit to being vague about some things (and some have been iterated upon to answer questions or clarify a point), everything I have written is true.

This isn't even worth refuting.

Transphobia can be based in sexism or anti-sexism.

The first I agree with.

The second - thank you for finally saying the quiet bit out loud.

Trans identities are a sexist belief. One cannot believe such identies are genuine expressions of "womanhood" or "manhood" without first buying into reductive personality-based constructs of "man" and "woman"

“I don't believe anyone but gender critical people and trans people care about this topic enough for it to genuinely 'matter' to them.”

Then you would be very wrong indeed.

But then again, you keep rejecting the research that shows that the majority of people want single sex provisions. I hear from friends when they are discussing an article from the news - such as Laurel Hubbard or the IOC policy change or the Supreme Court clarification when it hits the BBC. They are very much supportive of single sex provisions and none of them believe a male person can change sex.

Perhaps you surround yourself with people who tell you what they think you want to hear or will never raise the issue with you. Perhaps you have made that assumption that no one has correctly identified your sex as being male when the reality is that many people who would discuss this with you, do know you are male and won’t discuss it with you.

most of my friends with children have introduced it into conversation not knowing my views because thus are concerned.

I don't know the cause of transsexuality, or whatever the term is describing my experience today. It could be genetic, it could be environmental. My focus was changing my body, not adopting a gender. This isn't to say there aren't trans people who are completely focused on performing a role. That was the other type of 80s transsexual diagnosis.

My expression is identifiable as an expression by society, not me. There's a philosophical argument for recognition and reflection that could align with your thoughts somewhat, and I agree with, but I believe it is much deeper than where you went.

You don't need to know the "cause" to understand that the fundamental belief of Gebderism is that some minds are wrong for some bodies.

Everything else comes after.

most of my friends with children have introduced it into conversation not knowing my views because thus are concerned.

I've previously written about friends and colleagues who have mentioned a trans person or the trans topic. It is not with the same single-mindedness as gender critical people or trans people, for that matter.

I know that the medical treatment for transsexualism cured me of dysphoria and allowed me to experience a more normal life than I was led to believe was possible. For that I am thankful.

And yet, many people share the exact same view as the people you attempt to dismiss as being ‘gender critical’.

What is difference between those who also believe the same thing and those you dismiss as ‘gender critical’?

Oh yeah, and I very much doubt your thinking is "deeper" than "where [I] went".

I've seen no evidence whatsoever that you think anything like as deeply as the women replying to you. Every rabbithole I have seen you go down in your quest to delegitimise the validity of a female lived existence which is separate to yours is predictable and, I'm sorry to be blunt, tedious.

Medical treatment validated your sexist beliefs. Of course you feel happier.

I'd feel happier if my financial dysphoria was indulged with other people's money.

You feel happier because your gender dysphoria was indulged with other people's identities.

The philosophical argument is deeper. My thoughts are not deeper than yours.

There is no physical way possible for anyone’s brain to be in the ‘wrong body’.

There's that film 'the man with two brains' but apart from that....

Did I believe I would change sex? Yes.
Did I change sex? Yes.
Is this sexist? This wasn't a question I was asking myself at the time.
Is this sexist? Asking the question of me now? Maybe? Does it matter now? In some theoretical sense? Can I do anything about it now? No. I believe there are people with strong opinions on the topic about how sex change and its current social heterogeneity affect members of sex classes. There are also persistent religious beliefs and cultural beliefs that affect perception and placement of people within philosophies.

When you can get Crispr to cut your Y chromosome from every cell, then I will accept that you have changed sex.

Until then, it is a biological fact that you cannot change sex and your own belief that you have.

You live as a woman, that does not make you one.

It’s a lie to say you changed sex.

When you can get Crispr to cut your Y chromosome from every cell, then I will accept that you have changed sex.

Even if this were possible now, a substantial number of gender critical people would disagree with you.

Not sure if you are willfully misunderstanding or simply that as a Gender Absolutist person you are too ideologicaly constrained to take in my point, but the issue is not whether you believe you changed sex (clearly you do) or even whether you factually changed sex (clearly not, unless one also changes what the word "sex" has always meant), it is that you believed your mind was of the opposite sex.

There are also persistent religious beliefs and cultural beliefs that affect perception and placement of people within philosophies

Indeed. Your Gender Absolutist beliefs being a case in point.

I simply believe that

1. biological sex is a fact
2. It has measurable consequences especially for female people
3. Women's lives exist in the intersection of our physical female body, the life experiences we have because of it and how we see and police ourselves as a result. Men, including trans identified men such as yourself, exist in valid but different ways.
4. Women matter enough to have an identity in society and law that does not include trans identifying men such as yourself.
5. We have both a moral right and an excellent practical case that the name for women (in my meaning of the word not yours) should be the same one we always had given that it's the name our history is written under and still the common meaning. I do not deny that recently well meaning people will add "oh, and trans women of course" but this is not their natural language of thought, it's a conscious overlay.
6. Trans people are experiencing something separate to being the opposite sex and should coin new terminology for it.

You may believe otherwise. That is your belief. However your belief firstly means rejecting at least one of the statements above, and that unavoidably puts you in a more sexist position.

As a woman in the original sense, the people whose identity you do not believe is valid, I am telling your identity claim devalues, depersonalises and humilates women. This I experience just as deeply as whatever it is you experience that you have usurped the word "woman" to name.

I appreciate your beliefs do not align with this uncomfortable truth, but it is nevertheless truth.

Perhaps, but since there's little prospect of the practical question arising in your lifetime or mine, I'm more than happy to postpone considering that question until such a time as it is an actual possibility.

Here and now there is only one way to truly change sex, and that is to change what the word "sex" means. Which in truth changes nothing at all.

Thanks for the detailed response, PPW, but to be honest, I'm struggling with it just a paragraphs or two in.

I'm referring to social construction.

I know!!! My response was predicated on knowing this!

Culture doesn't separate out individuals for 'special treatment' to the degree trans people or gender critical people apparently believe.

I don't understand this. How could "culture" possibly "separate out individuals" for 'special treatment'"? What does this mean? Culture's an abstract concept used to describe wide-ranging commonalities in behaviour, belief etc. It has no direct relation to individuals in the sense you seem to use above. Are you using hyperbole, to make a rhetorical point? Or perhaps countering a belief you honestly think we have? Or yourself misunderstanding or misusing the word? or concept? of culture?

We are all floating in the same ocean and currents divide us based on the power structures in place, not to an idealised personally navigated pattern.

"Idealised personally navigated pattern" is similarly hard to understand - by "idealised", I think you must mean "ideal", in the sense of optimised personal preference, because "idealised" has a rather different meaning... but again I'm unsure. Fundamentally, though, you seem to be saying we're all influenced by culture again? If so, then again, I know that!!! Perhaps assume as a starting point that I understand this key concept. I'm not seeking oceanic metaphors (nice as yours actually is!), but rather just asking you to describe, clearly, the commonalities that suffice to define "woman" in "cultural" terms. AKA: what do we share culturally that, in your view, supersedes the 99(.9?)% universality of my period analogy?

I hope you don't mind the parsing above, but I want to show what I meant by the compounding of abstraction on abstraction, and ambiguity on ambiguity, in some of your replies, in the hope of something more definitive in future! We rarely get this level of sensible engagement from your perspective over here, and I genuinely want to understand better where you're coming from on a more holistic scale.

I think I am agreeing with you, and with many others, but because of gender critical beliefs, I am not permitted to own my experience in this space.

Following on from the above, I also think we have some potential for agreement, and find it frustrating that with clearer posting we could pin this down and really get into some interesting issues.

I don't entirely agree with the "not permitted", though. Posters have thanked you for your relation of your experiences, sympathised with you and responded to them. Many have also, it's true, expressed scepticism to a greater or lesser degree. I haven't, and am instead just asking you to move beyond the personal to debate in general terms as well.

As these are my thoughts on just the one paragraph, I may not respond much more (although, knowing me, probably will find it hard to resist when time permits!) I'll certainly read everything you wrote, though. I do respect your dogged engagement.

I'll be back (sans sinister Arnie connotations, though!)