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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Some clarity in how the trans movement became so embedded, so preeminent

1000 replies

MarcTheGenderSkeptic · 22/09/2026 13:17

Despite being called a conspiracist here by a TRA, actually I work very hard to continually interrogate my thought processes, and not fall into easy generalisations etc.
So, I was reading Róisín Michaux and her fascinating conversation with someone high up in HIV funding, and the push in the last 20 years is to get everyone in the tent on retrovirals, meaning reaching out to not just gays and addicts, but sex workers (incl trans) and critically, the "third genders" who have migrated to the West in large numbers to end up as sex workers. And the decision was made to go for maximum anti stigmatization, which means zero messaging on personal behaviour, and critically deciding to accept these men as women. Don't blame them, get more onside.
Guess who has to move aside, and accept the messaging on health grounds that biological men can be women? Made even worse by the increase in HIV in European women who are the partners of men who use the services of these "third genders".
Then yesterday I read the amazing post from Hellofabore about how for 30 years plus, the sports authorities including IOC and FIFA decided to make total inclusion the policy, phasing out gender testing, primarily to allow the male DSDs from Africa mainly to be included, as they were IDd as female at birth, and the cruelty to deny they're still female is wrong.
Again, the overwhelming need is to not stigmatize these individuals. Of course a huge group (we know who) are stigmatized for objecting to losing sports opportunities.
And then back to Róisín Michaux again, her illuminating the revolution in psychiatric medicine, where men back in the day were diagnosed with transvestic disorder, a pure paraphylia, again to stop judging and be more inclusive, underwent massive de-stigmatisation and de-pathologisation, from paraphylia, to dysphoria, now to common all garden "sexual health category".
Three enormous areas where the drive to include men, to destigmatise their plight, to bring them in from the cold, couldn't happen in a vacuum. Society organised along sex-based lines couldn't be simply recategorised, no, a large population group (51% XX) was expected to move over, make their definition porous, extend the collective hand of kindness and inclusion, to this hardcore of men who were deemed most at risk, and needing most help.
At the same time, this blurring of definitions and imposed inclusivity spread from sport and medicine to law and education, the most motivated men worked hard to get the Gender Recognition Act on the statute book, and via Stonewall culture, "social training" and the "trans child" escalated as concepts and then real world consequences as noone in polite society other than a very brave few said anything.
So now we have developing nations male DSDs and "third genders", socially incorporated transvestites/transsexuals, and queer culture first world transgenders in the mix, a political culture in the West frozen into aquiescence and policy drift, and the only light of realism and sanity, an army of women fighting back, with amazing results re SC ruling, banishing self ID into the long grass, and medical and sports bodies tacking back to sanity.
But reading the almost scary analogousness of how health brought in trans and third genders at the expense of women, sport brought in male DSDs at the expense of women, psychiatry brought in transvestites from the cold at the expense of women, you can then see how the most motivated men got the Gender Recognition Act on the statute book to turbo charge the social trans/trans child revolution.
For me, I can now see the past as it travels into the future.

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BlueLegume · 30/09/2026 09:20

BlueLegume · 30/09/2026 09:12

@Lacksie can you give us an idea of what point you are trying to make please?

You say you are not an activist. You post lists of pseudo science.

It feels like you think each post will be a gotcha and we will all suddenly ‘understand’ gender nonsense.

I would love to know your view on Giggle vs Tickle. That tends to give a wider picture of a persons stance in all this.

Edited

Can you read and answer this post I put up please? I am curious about your thoughts.

Rollingpinofdoom · 30/09/2026 09:20

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:17

The point I am trying to make is that people seem to believe that gender incongruence is some kind of superficial, false, externally imposed ideology, rooted in gender stereotypes.

When in fact, for many people, gender incongruence is a very real, neurocognitive/ psychiatric condition that comes from within a person and can cause debilitating amounts of suffering when it is untreated.

So if it is a psychological condition, and it is proven humans can’t change sex, why should people with GI be treated as those of the sex they wish they were instead of being treated the same as someone who believes they are Jesus? Should we crucify anyone who claims they are Jesus? If not, why not?

StandingDeskDisco · 30/09/2026 09:24

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:17

The point I am trying to make is that people seem to believe that gender incongruence is some kind of superficial, false, externally imposed ideology, rooted in gender stereotypes.

When in fact, for many people, gender incongruence is a very real, neurocognitive/ psychiatric condition that comes from within a person and can cause debilitating amounts of suffering when it is untreated.

Both are true.
Gender incongruence is a very real neurocognitive/ psychiatric condition, that causes real suffering.
Its roots lie in gender stereotypes, which are externally imposed or perceived: the stereotypes are out there in society and the media.
The person suffering gender incongruence has no idea what it is like to be the opposite sex, because they have never lived in a body of the opposite sex. All they have are the stereotypes that give them a false idea of what it is like to be the opposite sex.

FlirtsWithRhinos · 30/09/2026 09:24

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 07:19

Anyway I am not going to persuade you that being trans is a real condition because you are determined that it isn't.

Just maybe ask yourself, whether it's possible- at least possible? - that it could be. Do you have definitive proof that it isn't? So what if you are wrong?

I refer you to my post above, "So What?"

It being a real phenomenon in someone's subjective experience still doesn't justify the demands being made of other people.

We don't treat anorexic people as if they really are fat, nor have we changed clothing labels to accomodate/validate their feelings of fatness.

You know, quite recently I posted a lot about subjective vs objective reality to someone going down exactly the same path as you now are. I'll post some links. It will save me groundhog daying the same points again and again and again....

(I do wish newbies to FWR would take a bit of time to see what has been discussed in depth before. It's such basic netiquette. It would be so good to start from the point that the last person to make a particular argument dropped off rather than just repeat the same challenges and questions all over again.)

TheKeatingFive · 30/09/2026 09:29

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:19

Because providing hormonal treatments and removing body parts doesn't necessarily result in serious illness or loss of life.

There are many, many, many medical conditions for which we provide hormone therapies and surgical alternations of the body.

Edited

It’s treating a psychological issue with a physical treatment plan. Does that not seem very odd to you?

There is nothing wrong with these people endocrine systems. Or their sexual organs. Yet we are treating them. Why?

BlueLegume · 30/09/2026 09:32

@Lacksie very well put by @TheKeatingFive your response is really welcome regarding the question I posed regarding anorexia/ affirming care linked to how a person feels.
An anorexic feels fat. A man feels like a woman. A woman feels like a man. Do we treat them all the same or differently?

It’s treating a psychological issue with a physical treatment plan. Does that not seem very odd to you?
There is nothing wrong with these people endocrine systems. Or their sexual organs. Yet we are treating them. Why?

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:32

BlueLegume · 30/09/2026 09:20

Can you read and answer this post I put up please? I am curious about your thoughts.

** can you give us an idea of what point you are trying to make please?

I answered this;

The point I am trying to make is that people seem to believe that gender incongruence is some kind of superficial, false, externally imposed ideology, rooted in gender stereotypes.

When in fact, for many people, gender incongruence is a very real, neurocognitive/ psychiatric condition that comes from within a person and can cause debilitating amounts of suffering when it is untreated

You say you are not an activist. You post lists of pseudo science.

this isn't a question, it's a statement.

It feels like you think each post will be a gotcha and we will all suddenly ‘understand’ gender nonsense.

I don't know what to say to this. I would hope people would approach this topic with more curiosity and fewer assumptions, and that through reading clear and reasoned arguments they might be persuaded to open their minds a little to at least the possibility of other perspectives/ alternatives. But that is not my experience

I would love to know your view on Giggle vs Tickle. That tends to give a wider picture of a persons stance in all this

I have no idea what this is

BlueLegume · 30/09/2026 09:34

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:32

** can you give us an idea of what point you are trying to make please?

I answered this;

The point I am trying to make is that people seem to believe that gender incongruence is some kind of superficial, false, externally imposed ideology, rooted in gender stereotypes.

When in fact, for many people, gender incongruence is a very real, neurocognitive/ psychiatric condition that comes from within a person and can cause debilitating amounts of suffering when it is untreated

You say you are not an activist. You post lists of pseudo science.

this isn't a question, it's a statement.

It feels like you think each post will be a gotcha and we will all suddenly ‘understand’ gender nonsense.

I don't know what to say to this. I would hope people would approach this topic with more curiosity and fewer assumptions, and that through reading clear and reasoned arguments they might be persuaded to open their minds a little to at least the possibility of other perspectives/ alternatives. But that is not my experience

I would love to know your view on Giggle vs Tickle. That tends to give a wider picture of a persons stance in all this

I have no idea what this is

Edited

You have answered all I need to know by having no knowledge of Giggle vs Tickle. Thank you @Lacksie

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:34

BlueLegume · 30/09/2026 09:32

@Lacksie very well put by @TheKeatingFive your response is really welcome regarding the question I posed regarding anorexia/ affirming care linked to how a person feels.
An anorexic feels fat. A man feels like a woman. A woman feels like a man. Do we treat them all the same or differently?

It’s treating a psychological issue with a physical treatment plan. Does that not seem very odd to you?
There is nothing wrong with these people endocrine systems. Or their sexual organs. Yet we are treating them. Why?

Edited

What do you think the field the field of psychiatric medicine does?

TheKeatingFive · 30/09/2026 09:36

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:34

What do you think the field the field of psychiatric medicine does?

Treat psychiatric disorders with psychiatric medicine. Ie drugs that work on the brain.

Not drugs that work on other, healthy body parts.

Is that actually news to you?

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:39

TheKeatingFive · 30/09/2026 09:36

Treat psychiatric disorders with psychiatric medicine. Ie drugs that work on the brain.

Not drugs that work on other, healthy body parts.

Is that actually news to you?

No, that isn’t how medicine works. There is no principle in psychiatry that a psychiatric condition may only be treated with a drug that “works on the brain” and never by an intervention elsewhere in the body.

Treatment is chosen according to the particular condition and the evidence about benefits, harms and alternatives. Psychiatry routinely uses nutritional, behavioural, environmental and physical interventions as well as medication, and psychiatric drugs themselves have effects throughout the body.

TheKeatingFive · 30/09/2026 09:42

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:39

No, that isn’t how medicine works. There is no principle in psychiatry that a psychiatric condition may only be treated with a drug that “works on the brain” and never by an intervention elsewhere in the body.

Treatment is chosen according to the particular condition and the evidence about benefits, harms and alternatives. Psychiatry routinely uses nutritional, behavioural, environmental and physical interventions as well as medication, and psychiatric drugs themselves have effects throughout the body.

What psychiatric conditions are treated by treating a different, healthy body part?

Rollingpinofdoom · 30/09/2026 09:44

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:39

No, that isn’t how medicine works. There is no principle in psychiatry that a psychiatric condition may only be treated with a drug that “works on the brain” and never by an intervention elsewhere in the body.

Treatment is chosen according to the particular condition and the evidence about benefits, harms and alternatives. Psychiatry routinely uses nutritional, behavioural, environmental and physical interventions as well as medication, and psychiatric drugs themselves have effects throughout the body.

So you are saying trans is a mental illness? So why should society humour trans people by allowing them to access facilities for a sex they are deluded enough to think they are? If I claimed to be the queen, should I be allowed to rule the country? If not, why not?

BlueLegume · 30/09/2026 09:44

So @Lacksie if a patient goes to a doctor feeling they should only have one leg does the doctor refer them to a surgeon to remove that limb?

You have effectively explained trans/gender is a psychiatric illness so why remove healthy body parts to address an issue in the brain?

Datun · 30/09/2026 09:45

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:17

The point I am trying to make is that people seem to believe that gender incongruence is some kind of superficial, false, externally imposed ideology, rooted in gender stereotypes.

When in fact, for many people, gender incongruence is a very real, neurocognitive/ psychiatric condition that comes from within a person and can cause debilitating amounts of suffering when it is untreated.

Of course people realise that gender dysphoria is real. Some people here have had it, and even more people have children who have it.

The issue is that whatever causes it, it's not indicative of being the opposite sex.

Almost every (honest) medic connected to gender clinics will tell you that the main criteria for developing it will be either same sex attraction, having past sexual trauma, and/or being autistic.

And yes, there's an abundant amount of evidence to show that children and young people are being indoctrinated. In schools, online, everywhere. Stonewall, mermaids, GIRES, Gendered Intelligence, all of them were going into schools. The government had to actually tell schools that they are not allowed to discuss gender stereotyping in terms of what sex you might be!

Neither you nor anyone else will ever be able to change sex. And as Helle points out 'the person who has categorised themselves as being in anyway the opposite sex has done so only via their own constructed understanding of what constitutes as being the opposite sex'.

Women, and I can only really speak for women, are checking in on their biology all the bloody time. Have I started my period, why haven't I, when will it stop, do I need painkillers, might I be pregnant, why can't I get pregnant, I don't want to be pregnant, why won't my milk start, why has my milk stopped, is this the peri menopause, what's happened to my pelvic floor!

There's not a man on earth who thinks like that, nor ever will.

So what makes them think they're women? It's none of that. It's fuck all to do with women and their biology.

So yes, the only thing it can be is stereotypes. Or gender, as it's called. Hence 'gender critical'.

That's the 'wanting to be the other sex' part.

The not wanting to be the sex you are part, is completely different, obviously. But I sincerely hope that you can agree that not wanting to be the sex you are should not be any possible reason for reorganising the rights of both sexes to accommodate it.

ArabellaScott · 30/09/2026 09:48

Part of the assessment for surgery:

'Evidence of 12 continuous months of living in a gender role that is congruent with their gender identity; this must not entail a requirement for the individual to conform to externally imposed or arbitrary preconceptions about gender identity and presentation; this requirement is not about qualifying for surgery, but rather preparing and supporting the individual to cope with the profound personal and social consequences of surgery. Where individuals can demonstrate that they have been living in their gender role before the referral to the Provider, this will be taken into account. '

https://www.nottinghamshirehealthcare.nhs.uk/foi-disclosure-log-26-27?smbfolder=2002

(Gender Identity Clinic consent process)

What does this bolded sentence actually mean?

BackToLurk · 30/09/2026 09:49

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:07

LOADS!

Medicine is full of conditions for which there is no definitive diagnostic test and where the patient's history and reported symptoms are central to diagnosis.

Migraine, IBS, fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, chronic pain disorders, insomnia, tinnitus and many functional neurological disorders are obvious physical examples. Then there are ADHD, autism, depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD, OCD, bipolar disorder and many other psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions and so so many more.

Doctors may examine the patient or order tests to rule out other explanations, but that is quite different from having a test which proves the condition itself.

"Relying on a patient's testimony" really makes it sound much stranger than it is. Taking a clinical history — what someone experiences, when it started, how persistent it is, how it affects them, and whether it fits established diagnostic criteria — is one of the basic tools of medicine. If you decided that subjective symptoms didn't count unless they could be independently demonstrated by a blood test or scan, you really would dismantle a huge part of healthcare.

ADHD diagnosis doesn’t just ‘rely on the patient’s testimony’.

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:50

TheKeatingFive · 30/09/2026 09:42

What psychiatric conditions are treated by treating a different, healthy body part?

Well that's a much narrower question than your original claim. If you mean psychiatric conditions routinely treated by surgically altering an otherwise anatomically healthy body part, there aren’t many close analogues — but medicine doesn’t require a treatment to have an analogue in another condition before it can be legitimate.

An example could be treatment for PMDD/ severe PMS. This is a condition defined largely by cyclical mood and behavioural symptoms, yet one recognised treatment is hormonal suppression of normal ovarian function. GnRH agonists can suppress ovulation and ovarian hormone production, effectively inducing a reversible “chemical menopause,” specifically to relieve severe cyclical psychological/behavioural symptoms. NHS sources describe this use explicitly.

And indeed my friend has just been offered a hysterectomy for severe PMDD! Her uterus is anatomically healthy.

There are also psychiatric conditions where treatment acts on structurally healthy parts of the body — for example physiotherapy for functional neurological disorder, nutritional/enteral interventions in eating disorders, and physical interventions such as vagus-nerve stimulation or ECT in severe depression — but none of those needs to be a perfect analogy. Different conditions very obviously require different kinds of treatment.

What matters is whether a particular intervention is an effective treatment for the particular condition, what its risks and benefits are, what alternatives exist, and what the outcomes are with and without treatment.

Datun · 30/09/2026 09:51

ArabellaScott · 30/09/2026 09:48

Part of the assessment for surgery:

'Evidence of 12 continuous months of living in a gender role that is congruent with their gender identity; this must not entail a requirement for the individual to conform to externally imposed or arbitrary preconceptions about gender identity and presentation; this requirement is not about qualifying for surgery, but rather preparing and supporting the individual to cope with the profound personal and social consequences of surgery. Where individuals can demonstrate that they have been living in their gender role before the referral to the Provider, this will be taken into account. '

https://www.nottinghamshirehealthcare.nhs.uk/foi-disclosure-log-26-27?smbfolder=2002

(Gender Identity Clinic consent process)

What does this bolded sentence actually mean?

Jesus. It requires evidence of 12 continuous months of fuck all to cope with profound personal and social consequences??

TheKeatingFive · 30/09/2026 09:52

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:50

Well that's a much narrower question than your original claim. If you mean psychiatric conditions routinely treated by surgically altering an otherwise anatomically healthy body part, there aren’t many close analogues — but medicine doesn’t require a treatment to have an analogue in another condition before it can be legitimate.

An example could be treatment for PMDD/ severe PMS. This is a condition defined largely by cyclical mood and behavioural symptoms, yet one recognised treatment is hormonal suppression of normal ovarian function. GnRH agonists can suppress ovulation and ovarian hormone production, effectively inducing a reversible “chemical menopause,” specifically to relieve severe cyclical psychological/behavioural symptoms. NHS sources describe this use explicitly.

And indeed my friend has just been offered a hysterectomy for severe PMDD! Her uterus is anatomically healthy.

There are also psychiatric conditions where treatment acts on structurally healthy parts of the body — for example physiotherapy for functional neurological disorder, nutritional/enteral interventions in eating disorders, and physical interventions such as vagus-nerve stimulation or ECT in severe depression — but none of those needs to be a perfect analogy. Different conditions very obviously require different kinds of treatment.

What matters is whether a particular intervention is an effective treatment for the particular condition, what its risks and benefits are, what alternatives exist, and what the outcomes are with and without treatment.

Well that is the question being asked.

However what relevance does your example have? Severe PMS is a hormonal condition, therefore should of course be treated hormonally.

ArabellaScott · 30/09/2026 09:53

'2.1.1 Gender dysphoria The term used to describe a discrepancy between birth-assigned sex and gender identity is gender incongruence; this term is preferable to the 2 formerly-used terms of gender identity disorder and transsexualism. Gender incongruence is frequently, but not universally, accompanied by the symptom of gender dysphoria. The current version of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems identifies ‘transsexualism’ (ICD 10 code F64) as “a disorder characterized by a strong and persistent cross-gender identification (such as stating a desire to be the other sex or frequently passing as the other sex) coupled with persistent discomfort with his or her sex (manifested in adults, for example, as a preoccupation with altering primary and secondary sex characteristics through hormonal manipulation or surgery)”.'

www.england.nhs.uk/publication/service-specification-gender-identity-services-for-adults-non-surgical-interventions/

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:53

BackToLurk · 30/09/2026 09:49

ADHD diagnosis doesn’t just ‘rely on the patient’s testimony’.

I have ADHD. Diagnosed by the NHS. the assessment involved asking me a lot of questions, taking a clinical history and presumably some clinical observation.
this Is exactly how diagnosis for gender dysphoria happens. There was no "test" administered that could objectively prove I have adhd. I now receive medication on the nhs.

BackToLurk · 30/09/2026 09:54

Lacksie · 30/09/2026 09:09

The point is, that the person who has categorised themselves as being in anyway the opposite sex has done so only via their own constructed understanding of what constitutes as being the opposite sex or the rejection of what they categorise as being their own sex

That's an assumption though. What basis do you have for being so certain about it? There could be many alternative aetiologies.

People don’t believe themselves to be Jesus Christ without having a constructed understanding of who ‘Jesus Christ’ is, a meaning constructed from external sources.

ArabellaScott · 30/09/2026 10:00

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/specialised-services-quality-dashboards-gender-dysphoria-metric-definitions-for-2022-23/

'2.14 Surgical interventions that are commissioned by NHS England, and referral criteria

The Provider will deliver certain surgical interventions intended to reduce gender dysphoria, and improve health, quality of life and social functioning in people who have gender dysphoria that is a consequence of incongruence between their identity, and their biologically-determined sex characteristics and the social role traditionally expected of people with such biologically-determined sex characteristics.
...
The following specialist surgery and associated care is commissioned by NHS England:
• Mastectomy and related chest reconstruction for individuals assigned female at birth
• Genital reconstruction'

My bolding.

BackToLurk · 30/09/2026 10:00

I’m fully aware of the diagnosis pathway for ADHD. Third party feedback (eg a parent) is also used. Not just the testimony of the patient, and the questionnaires used are designed to filter out ‘saying what you think you should’.

And I can tell you from experience, the diagnosis pathway for gender dysphoria is not done ‘exactly’ like that.

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