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.

I am one person, inhabiting the same cultural environment as every other person. My experiences and the environment's actions and reactions upon me do not change how you experience that environment and how the environment acts or reacts to your presence.

Again, with the one-dimensional assumptions. It isn't only my friends.

Clearly I do not understand.

You inhabit the same wider cultural environment as women but you do not inhabit the exact same space within it, and your attempts to change the culture to mean that you do unavoidably reduce and flatten our cultural understanding of the true breadth of female experiences.

HTH.

ETA: I'm glad you feel my understanding of your situation is one dimensional, because this is how your understanding of female people's situation comes across to us. I hope you now see why we have so little truck with it.

I also understood your use of "surgically altered male" in reference to me is a choice that denies the entirety of my body, independent of surgery. Which is a very relevant target of my presence within cultures.

ETA: It is ironic and somewhat GC-centric at the same time to characterise me based on my genitals, which society never sees.

That is your belief.

I and many others do not share your belief.

I do not agree l that physically adjusting your body through surgery or hormones changes its fundamental sex, nor do I share your belief that presentation, behaviour or how others treat you is a more meaningful, useful or sufficient definition for the existing and longstanding words "man","woman","male" and "female" than their already extant sex-based meanings.

I agree there is a reasonable case to recognise presentation or behaviour as a meaningful thing in its own right which for convenience I will in this post call "gender", but you have not in my opinion made any case to replace the very useful meanings of the existing words, nor to change to basis on which existing laws and provisions were made from sex to "gender".

I characterise you based on your sex.

Whatever interventions you may since have made to your body are as irrelevant to that as your choice of hat.

I see sex segregation as a necessary evil that reflects the consequences of body sex on our social needs and challenges especially those of us who unlike you are female. To that degree, these provisions are a necessary utility.

As body sex is neither optional nor mutable, taking these provisions away doe not destroy the need, it simply destroys utility.

I see no utility in personality-based segregation. It makes as little sense to me to replace sex based provisions with gender based ones as it would to replace them with ones based on hair colour.

Society doesn’t have to see anyone’s genitals to be able to correctly identify a person’s sex category.

And ‘social’ sex category is meaningless as a definition of female people for any purpose of defining who is female and who isn’t. As too is ‘cultural’ sex category.

The only people who would consider them important for the definition of female people as a sex class are those who are determined to find a philosophical theory that will give them entry into the female sex category because they are male.

I don’t categorise you by your genitals. I categorise you by your sex. And that remains male.

If I can’t have the word woman to describe people who were born female, what word is there for the female of the sex class human?

But you yourself admitted tht your dna is male and that you've had surgery.

To clarify:

I do not characterise you, the complete person, by your sex.

I simply characterise your sex by your sex.

Your sex is just a small part of who you are. Nevertheless it is a part of who you are, a fact about you that exists alongside all the other facts about you.

So in those times when sex specifically is what matters, then and only then, you, like everyone else, are characterised by your sex.

(Yes, I characterise your sex by your sex is a tautology. That's rather the point. Genderists such as yourself want "sex" to mean something that is not "sex". GC people think it just means, well, sex.)

Maybe this is me being really dense. And maybe I’ll get slaughtered.

But I read some of poly’s posts and I have no idea what they’re supposed to mean.

It's not just you. I think they mean 'I will waffle until you give in'.

Thank you for the above. I found it easier to understand in every sense, mostly, than some previous posts, and appreciate your attempts to address my questions.

In some of it we seem to find agreement.

In parts, I wasn't sure what your argument was (eg. in your ref. to proportions of girls with primary amenorrhea relative to those with DSDs, I wasn't sure how this countered my points - to me, it seemed rather to support them! - or maybe, then, you were supporting them and it was simply agreement...?)

To be more selective than last time, the parts I picked up on as most removed from my original post or views were...

1. I asked: "What do we (ie. women) share culturally that, in your view, supersedes the 99(.9?)% universality of my period analogy?" Your answer seemed to be to an entirely different question: "I believe culturally, speaking of the UK, my experience and place in society would primarily be recognised within the ‘wife and working mother with a grown family’ roles and expectations". This doesn't touch what I was asking...

2. You say: "I cannot place myself into the archetypical ‘trans woman’ straw man (for whatever it’s worth) that FWR/gender critical people have built". I can see why you use this phrasing, as by your own account you're so far removed from the vast majority of TW. But "strawman"? I think that's rather unfair. There are very clearly a range of "types" reflected in research, the media and by their own very public account, all acknowledged and discussed here. The types of most concern will understandably get most "air time" here, but they're clearly very real (let's not deny anyone's existence!) One of the reasons this ideology disturbs me is the way it seems to end up privileging more problematic voices - and types - at the expense of others closer to how you describe yourself.

You aren't alone, it's completely deliberate.

Again, my thanks, and a selective response for the sanity of all readers, having gone a bit overboard yesterday (plus used this to procrastinate on some pretty important stuff which yet remains to be done! 😅)

the gender critical belief that all human life emanates from one of a pair of immutable essential internal sex states.

As you took the time to reply, I'll keep going, but if you genuinely think your phrase above is a niche belief, it may not be worth our while continuing this much longer. This is remarkable.

A practical need? I understand some women feel very strongly about needing to control the word.

And with this my resilience crumbled a little bit further, I'm afraid. After an offensive opening above, it's more of the same: avoidant incoherence. We can't debate things that deny the rules of science (sexual reproduction as GC myth) or grammar and semantics (what follows this). Why not have the courage of your convictions and say, "No, I don't believe there's a practical need for this"?

People’s understanding of 'women' still defaults to encompassing everything you list above.

Interesting. So how do we end up with mixed-sex rape crisis centres and courts exploring whether employees have the right to warn victims with PTSD of the presence of male bodies? Is it that such employees "feel very strongly about needing to control that word" and need to get over this petty obsession?

a very very small (statistically unclear) percentage of women refer to themselves as ‘adult human females’... however every other UN Special Rapporteur would seem to be supportive of broader human rights efforts

From interesting to fascinating. You're talking in global terms. Has it occurred that a majority of women across the globe won't even have heard of our concept of self-identification, and that even if they do favour your cultural definition of woman, would be astonished to discover that in our corner of the world that includes transitioned males? "Broader human rights" seems to exclude a heck of a lot of people - or, to impose culturally colonialist assumptions on them.

“human life emanates from one of a pair of immutable essential internal sex states.”

this seems to me to be a long winded way of saying everyone starts as one sex or the other. This isn’t a gender critical belief per se - it’s just a fact?

i mean, even people with DSDs have a DSD - Disorder of Sex Development - they are one sex or the other and have not developed typically.

why is it so extraordinary to say that there are 2 sexes?

as long as my lived reality is denied by gender critical people, I am unlikely to be able to discuss anything beyond my life experience

Much as I dislike that phrase (deep breath!)... I think a lot of posters here feel you deny their lived reality, but have no difficulty looking at the bigger picture.

I do understand, though, that for you as a minority of minorities, posting on this particular thread, the need to focus on and defend the personal will feel imperative. I do also think that in doing so to this extent, though, you're resolutely turning your back on some vital "broader human rights" issues, to use one of your own phrases.

Regardless, I do appreciate your engagement and wish you well in your journey.

PS I'll probably follow along still but may not engage much more, so please don't worry about replying.

Oh really?

So you're saying you didn't get given puberty blockers now! So you've gone all the way through male puberty then!

Yes you did, you told us you were Tanner stage 3, no ifs ands or buts. Then a few posts later you admitted that you'd taken a wild guess and you had no idea what Tanner stage you were.

And so now you don't pass? Well I can believe that!

Nice to see you aren't disagreeing with me on all the other lies you told.

So you lied when you said you had been given hormones as a young boy/teen.

The relationship with facts is tenuous at best.

Blockers were not prescribed. I was on ethinyl estradiol. Besides being an oestrogen, it had a very strong testosterone reduction side effect.

Share the post I said I was Tanner stage 3, no ifs ands or buts.

I was prescribed hormones as a teen. There were no gender programs in Canada prescribing hormones. As there were no gender programs in any other countries prescribing hormones to teens either back then. Teens receiving hormone treatment was extremely rare and depended on a GP rather than an endocrinologist. (ETA: Adding to my knowledge, because the two others I've heard of went through a similar experience)

It's true that many on this thread have expressed scepticism about your passing. Some haven't, though. And almost all have expressed their scepticism in a way that acknowledges that you may well in some / many / almost all contexts - just not all. I've not commented on this: 1) I just don't know enough about what conditions and treatments like those you describe may lead to and 2) I don't like to use the more personal in my posts - neither about my life, nor yours! - @Catiette

I have not speculated on whether PPW always passes. The only information I have about that is what PPW has said—that he does—and my own experiences with transwomen, which is that almost all of them say they pass and very, very few of them do, even when I see them metres away for a brief moment. I don't know many transwomen who had cross-sex hormones as teens, though.

My point is that it's not possible for PPW or any other person to know if he always passes or that he will always pass. You shouldn't base policy—or make exceptions to it—on something that’s fundamentally unknowable.

@Catiette @polypostwonder @FlirtsWithRhinos @Helleofabore @CohensDiamondTeeth @Taztoy and others,

Sorry, I meant to thank all the people in this thread for the discussion. Thank you all.