Gender again. Sorry!

[monkers]

An excellent explainer and I thank you for it. It does help many of us to understand where different points of view come from.

I think where the dissonance comes in is that as well as the people you describe, there is also a cadre of the male sex who enjoy dressing up in women's clothes as a fetish and using this to gain access to women's spaces by claiming that they are women - whether that's lesbian groups or whatever. We then have the secondary issues around ensuring that things like sport remain fair.

I think it's the secondary group that most people are concerned with. That and ensuring that people in the primary group of "truly trans" really are trans and not just young autistic adults seeking to fit in, or young adults confused about their identity. Hence the concerns around ensuring safeguarding and that medications or surgical interventions are not offered to people too soon.

Thank you for those words.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to quote myself from my first post to this thread ~ #918.

A problem word is 'transgender'. It's problematic for a number of reasons.
1 It's spelt with the 'trans' part as a prefix rather than an adjective like other trans terms.
2 If a person undergoes transition, their gender is confirmed not changed as the term implies.
3 It's an umbrella term that includes not just trans people, but transvestites, crossdressers, etc.
4 It's used in different ways in different parts of the world.
5 It lends itself to the form 'transgendered' which is in turn problematic for a number of reasons, but essentially it suggest that to be trans is to experience an enforced change by something external to the person.

Transvestites / crossdressers / Tgirls - [placeholder - they can insert their word of choice here] are not trans in everyday identity but trans in occasional presentation. They identify as male, and as men. They definitely do not sincerely identify as female or women, though they might playfully say so when dressed; unless they are actually trans and on the beginning of a 'journey' (ie not yet 'out'). Plenty of gay men refer to each as 'she' and as 'madam' and 'bitches' - 'oh listen to her (another gay guy) ' they might say.

When I say 'trans folk' I'm not including all those under the transgender umbrella, just those whose whole time identities have changed or in the process of changing.

Personally I think the word 'fetish' is also a bit problematic being as it a word loaded with moral judgement. Maybe it is just more of an aesthetic?

I don't know. Year ago I went to a house party given somebody I knew. When the door was opened I found my then friend was hosting as an adult baby - they'd never said, and I had no idea this was her thing. She later rode her partner around the garden who had spent thousands on a bespoke costume to make him look like a horse. I admit my surprise, and I don't 'get it' from a personal perspective, but different strokes for different folks eh? I doubt that if it wasn't for the internet that they would ever have found each other.

The media like to simply use the word 'transgender' because they know that their readers will associate that with their typical guff about trans women presenting them as harmful or dangerous fetishists. Fetishism is persistent across all groups - there a plenty of couple with furry handcuffs and the like, and plenty who attend burlesque shows without being gay or transgender in any way. Hence my take, 'an aesthetic'.

Maybe we can be free to critique art without critiquing those with a different sense of aesthetic to ourselves. One problem is that so many of us were brought up in a culture with lingering Victorian morals and standards - there are Tories who want to take us back there. Today a chap wearing a top hat, tails, and sporting a monocle riding a penny farthing looks rather eccentric. So it seems we've left behind a lot of Victorian aesthetic very happily, but not the moral judgements that deny folk the right to be themselves.

I really don't know too much about sport, but I do think that there are reasonable steps that can be taken that negate the need for blanket bans from everything to track events to board games like chess. Blanket bans are unlawful for good reason. I don't play golf, but their system of handicapping players according to their record in the preceding games (have I got that right?) seems like it's worth considering where appropriate for other sports too.

 

[AuroraSaab]

There's no such thing as a lady brain, however much transactivists would like us to believe.

You could see the books by neurologist Gina Rippon for a start, or this study that looked at many studies done on the issue:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210325115316.htm#:~:text="Sex differences are sexy, but,that differ between the sexes.

"Men and women's brains do differ slightly, but the key finding is that these distinctions are due to brain size, not sex or gender," Dr. Eliot said. "Sex differences in the brain are tiny and inconsistent, once individuals' head size is accounted for."

So it turns out your big or tiny head is more relevant to brain differences than your subjective lady-feelz.

As to the trans umbrella covering everybody from those with body dysmorphia to men with a fetish, well this is what you get when you insist on 'You are who you say you are?'. Which is what certain people on here have done throughout.

This is what Stonewall, Mermaids, and all the other transactivists have demanded. No diagnosis, nothing other than self identifying as the opposite sex. 'It's enough to say 'I am a woman' remember?

Which means of course that you have to accept that every transwoman sex offender and every man with a fetish is as much 'trans' as those with body dysphoria. How can we tell the difference?

Though of course it's perfectly legitimate on occasion to exclude all men, because it's done on the basis of them being men and regardless of how they identify, whether they are genuinely dysphoric, and whether they are harmless or not.

 

[monkers]

There's no such thing as a lady brain, however much transactivists would like us to believe.

You could see the books by neurologist Gina Rippon for a start, or this study that looked at many studies done on the issue:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210325115316.htm#:~:text="Sex differences are sexy, but,that differ between the sexes.

Was this you .... ?

Adult women are better at identifying sex than men are too, and the longer they get to look the better they do.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ar...eta-analysis of own,only male faces are shown.

What part of the anatomy are we women using to manage this if not our brains?

 

[CXRAndy]

Was this you .... ?


What part of the anatomy are we women using to manage this if not our brains?

Eyes

 

[monkers]

Eyes

You plank.

 

[Ian H]

Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen stated that "most biologists and neuroscientists agree that prenatal biology and culture combine to explain average sex differences in the brain". He argues that Rippon "[boxes] herself into an extremist position by arguing that it’s all culture and no biology"

 

[AuroraSaab]

Was this you .... ?
What part of the anatomy are we women using to manage this (women being able to identify males) if not our brains?

Some partially innate ability (remember innateness? It's what you said being trans was) born from women being the ones who have looked after babies for 100,000 years, possibly some also innate ability borne from millenia of women needing to identify men easily because they are more likely to harm them, and likely some unconscious ability learned from experience.

Saying 'Babies can distinguish male from female' and 'Women can usually tell if the person following them is male' is a world away from saying that transwomen have brains more similar to women than to their own sex.

 

[AndyRM]

Eyes

Explain nipples.

 

[AuroraSaab]

Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen stated that "most biologists and neuroscientists agree that prenatal biology and culture combine to explain average sex differences in the brain". He argues that Rippon "[boxes] herself into an extremist position by arguing that it’s all culture and no biology"

There's a discussion on YouTube between Ripon and Baron-Cohen. I think he is right on the culture thing (Ripon doesn't disagree with that aspect obviously) but I didn't find his other views convincing. I think 'most biologists' is simply not true. Baron-Cohen also thinks autism is from having an excessively male brain, which I'm not convinced about either.

 

[monkers]

Some partially innate ability (remember innateness? It's what you said being trans was) born from women being the ones who have looked after babies for 100,000 years, possibly some also innate ability borne from millenia of women needing to identify men easily because they are more likely to harm them, and likely some unconscious ability learned from experience.

Saying 'Babies can distinguish male from female' and 'Women can usually tell if the person following them is male' is a world away from saying that transwomen have brains more similar to women than to their own sex.

Gender incongruence [edit: gender identity] is indeed innate. The WHO say so because they understand the meaning of the word in the context it is being used.

You can carry on your arguments all you like, but one thing doing the heavy lifting in your posts is that complex things can only have a single explanation, and that words can convey only a single meaning. Life's more complex and wonderful than in the single-minded world of AuroraSaab I'm afraid.

 

[monkers]

Explain nipples.

I can't, but I do know that nasal hair is connected to the back of my eyeballs but not to my nipples - least it feels that way when I pluck the damn stuff.

 

[AuroraSaab]

.... one thing doing the heavy lifting in your posts is that complex things can only have a single explanation, and that words can convey only a single meaning.

On the contrary, I think there are several reasons why men say they are women or teenage girls think they are boys. Some are complicated, others less so. It's transactivists who favour the rather simplistic view that non conforming boys and girls must be transgender, or that the only explanation for men who want to dress in stereotypical women's clothes and seek access to women's spaces is that they actually are women.

Once again though this is just obfuscation and linguistic gymnastics aimed at giving certain men what they want.

 

[monkers]

On the contrary, I think there are several reasons why men say they are women or teenage girls think they are boys. Some are complicated, others less so. It's transactivists who favour the rather simplistic view that non conforming boys and girls must be transgender, or that the only explanation for men who want to dress in stereotypical women's clothes and seek access to women's spaces is that they actually are women.

Once again though this is just obfuscation and linguistic gymnastics aimed at giving certain men what they want.

What does 'innate' mean?

 

[newfhouse]

It's transactivists who favour the rather simplistic view that non conforming boys and girls must be transgender, or that the only explanation for men who want to dress in stereotypical women's clothes and seek access to women's spaces is that they actually are women

Could you point me to where anyone here has said this?

 

[Mr Celine]

Explain nipples.

Surely unnecessary on a cycling forum.