Non-binary: What do you understand it to mean?

[AuroraSaab]

Is there any evidence that, in communal female changing rooms, trans women who haven’t had surgery stroll about naked showing their penises to all and sundry?
Are they not more likely to go in a cubicle or keep a towel around them in order not to draw attention to their differences?

The issue is about women's right to privacy and safety, and the right to be away from males in places and at times where they feel vulnerable. I think that women have a right to that regardless of whether that male is transgender, and regardless of whether that person is clothed or unclothed.

For example, I don't think women in domestic violence refuges should have to be in counselling groups, with males if they don't want to. I think lesbian women should be able to exclude transwomen from their groups if they wish. Under self-id and with the single sex exemptions of the Equality Act gone, any exclusion would be illegal.

When you get on a plane to go on holiday, and your family has to share a row with other passengers, where do your kids sit? Do they sit next to the unknown male passenger, or do you? He will almost certainly be perfectly safe but does your 12 year old daughter sit next to him or you? Chances are he won't be offended that it's you, because decent blokes aren't. They totally understand that women and girls don't want to be close to males in certain situations. Same in cinemas. Pretty sure it will be you sitting next to an unknown man in the dark, not your young children.

Why are you unwilling to extend the ability to do that to women on hospital wards, mental health units, refuges, and yes, changing rooms?

I guess you either think females have the right to be treated as a separate sex class, able to organise for their unique needs, or you don't. If transwomen are women for all purposes, legal and social, with no exceptions however proportionate, then you have removed that ability and made every space a unisex space.

Transwomen and crime stats:

https://fairplayforwomen.com/transgender-male-criminality-sex-offences/

 

[theclaud]

I guess you either think females have the right to be treated as a separate sex class, able to organise for their unique needs, or you don't.

Bit George Bush, innit? I do think women have the right to organise in their interests, and to understand those interests as distinct from those of trans women, but I don't believe this has to involve a retreat into essentialism, or some kind of reheated Separate Spheres doctrine. This thread was supposed to be about the meaning of 'non-binary'. Your post above illustrates the set-piece tendency I mentioned. I don't think that moral panics advance women's rights or liberation, and nothing you can write is going to persuade me that Trans Prisons Now is a feminist idea. Read some Angela Davis, FFS. Non-binary doesn't have to have an objective truth for it to be a meaningful concept in the way people understand themselves. People, especially young people, try out new things in the search for new ways of being. Some of them are silly, some of them might be revolutionary. It isn't a threat to your safety if a teenager says it's important to them to be referred to as 'they'. Almost no-one thinks male sex offenders who identify as female should be housed with women prisoners. Meanwhile, it doesn't seem to cross your mind that most women prisoners, and a substantial proportion of men, shouldn't be inside at all.

 

[Unkraut]

That is what self-ID is. We would rightly have concerns if a white man blacked up and said that they identified as a black Nigerian. How would we feel if they underwent skin darkening and cosmetic surgery to look more "black" - would that be universally accepted?

Why would we have concerns? If you are what you self identify as, then that is the end of the matter. What's sauce for the goose ...

Isn't the truth that you are what you were when you were born, and this cannot be changed, even with superficial cosmetic surgery? If it is possible to change sex/gender, then why is it not possible to change ethnicity? It's incoherent to push for one and deny the other.

 

[FishFright]

Yes. They probably are. However, just for the sake of argument, there is the possibility that there might be some men who get off on doing that, and if they have said they are a woman, they have the same right to be there as the trans woman quaking in the cubicle.

As @AuroraSaab has pointed out very eloquently, the issue is that *any* man can declare that they are a woman, and it is so. That is what self-ID is. We would rightly have concerns if a white man blacked up and said that they identified as a black Nigerian. How would we feel if they underwent skin darkening and cosmetic surgery to look more "black" - would that be universally accepted?

Of course if you have darker skin and undergo skin lightening and surgery to look more western, there is much less concern. This is presumably because if you want to look or identify as belonging to a group perceived to be stronger, larger, etc there is less of an issue than someone from that group wanting to look or identify as belong to a group perceived to be a minority group.

We know that men are stronger, and bigger (generally speaking) by their biological nature. We can look after their mental health and still ensure that women feel safe and protected where they need to be.

Look at the lengths some young white women go to look Hispanic at the moment , not only in shade but in shape. It does puzzle me why .

 

[FishFright]

The criticism is aimed at me, and I'd like to know what I have made up as well.

I bolded an example when I made the talking rubbish comment. If that's not clear enough I'm not sure where to go .

 

[Bromptonaut]

It's estimated that only 20% of those who describe themselves as transgender have undergone surgical procedures, so the vast majority of transwomen will remain male bodied. If the UK adopts self-id as law, on what grounds would transwomen be excluded from the jobs I mentioned? On what grounds would they be excluded from a female hospital ward? It would be illegal to do so. And surely if they were it wouldn't make them as 'equal' as you seem to wish.

I genuinely don't understand what 'living like a woman' means. How do women live? I'm a woman, I'm alive.... am I living like a woman? How does how I live differ from how a man lives? I'd be grateful if you could explain what 'living like a woman' means.



The difference with self id is that no-one could challenge a male in a female space. Any male could be in a female space, whether genuinely trans or not. Why make it easier for predators?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost...ry-of-indecent-exposure-and-masturbation/amp/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/4w.pub/disturbing-footage-brazil/amp/

https://apnews.com/article/us-news-...re-lifestyle-14cd954b06360d21349b77233318369e



Transwomen have the same pattern of offending as other males. If you are going to argue that they should have access to single sex spaces, then you have made these spaces unisex spaces and you might as well open them to all males.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...omens-jails-by-transgender-convicts-cx9m8zqpg

In Ireland all you need to self id as a woman is to complete a form and wait 2 weeks. There's no other gatekeeping in terms of surgery, hormones or anything else. There are currently two (possibly 3) transwomen held in Limerick's women's jail. As I understand it both are there for sexual or violent offences.

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news...with-threats-to-kill-two-people-39563823.html

And of course, both in Ireland and some parts of England, crimes committed by men are recorded as being committed by females:

https://www.thejournal.ie/woman-jailed-criminal-court-5392090-Mar2021/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-53410019.amp

If my daughter were in a changing room with my young grandchild and there was a transwoman there isn't the 3 year olds stage whisper of 'Mummy, why has that lady got a willy' just another of those body/bodily functions questions parents have to handle?

I think that is a surprisingly relaxed attitude to seeing male genitalia in a female space, especially seen by children, and not one that most women share. I think you are naive if you imagine there are not men who will use self id and the cover of claiming to be transgender to access these spaces. Men do this already, why make it easier?

In summary:

1. Self id will mean an end to all single sex spaces and exemptions.
2. What does 'living as a woman' mean? I'd love to know.
3. It is because of male criminality that we exclude all men from spaces where women are vulnerable.
4. You might have no objection to your granddaughters changing in proximity to males, or sharing hospital wards etc. Research suggests many others do.

As to 'separate but not equal', I would suggest that what this actually means is that you consider that transwomen are entitled to the validation of being in women's single sex spaces. I do not think it is the job of women to validate other people's identities and give up their spaces to avoid hurting people's feelings.

You've kindly summarised your questions into bullets. I have converted them to numbers to give a bit more structure:

1. I simply don't think we've yet got the facts to support the assertion that Self id will mean an end to all single sex spaces and exemptions. If when the UK/English government comes up with proposals then they should certainly cover the long standing exemptions in Equality Law. That doesn't mean people should be permitted a veto on the professional roles adopted by trans women but that the law should be able to deal with such issues as actually and reasonably apply.
2. I cannot find the phrase 'living as a woman' in my long post yesterday. However if I use it (or living as a man) it has the same meaning as in S 2(1)(b) of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/section/2
3. I agree a proportionate response is needed - a matter for draft legislation. This is disproportionate because contrary to current law it treats transwomen as men. You have already said, I think in response to The Claude, that you do not favour winding back the GRA.
4. I suspect this depends on how you pose the question. Again, we're arguing from opposite premises as you are sticking to the line that, whatever their progression in the acquired gender transwomen are still men. I suspect the number of instances where a trans woman with a penis, an organ that incidentally they no more welcome than you do, allow it to be visible in an open changing space would be vanishingly small.

My grandchild is a boy but the point remains the same.

 

[swansonj]

Just a final comment from me on the "definition of sex" issue. My perspective is that it's a human trait - I would say weakness - to want to fit everything into neat categories. But the universe ain't like that. A person doesn't have a label saying male or female, and a plant doesn't have a label saying geranium or pelargonium. People and plants just are, in all our infinite variety. Categories and labels are helpful for many purposes but they are only ever human constructs.

It suits some people to say that sex is biologically fixed, unambiguous, and binary, and that everything else is gender, which does not have a biological reality. But that strikes me as applying a greatly oversimplified schema onto a much more complex reality. Sex as defined by XX/XY is unchanging, sure. But it's only binary in a statistical sense ("everyone is either XX or XY except for the ones who aren't" is hardly a ringing scientific approach). And it's surely a recent development in understanding of the concept "sex". For most of human history, and for most practical purposes even today, we use sex as a label for either body appearance or reproductive function. And both of those are more of a spectrum, and more changeable, and certainly more complex, than XX/XY. ""Sex" can mean different (overlapping) things in different contexts and I don't find it helpful to insist that only one of those is "correct".

You will note that I haven't expressed any view on the core issue of women's right v. transpeople's rights and I don't intend to. I just find my antennas twitching a little bit when an argument is supported by an oversimplification of the infinite variety of human beings.

 

[icowden]

Sex as defined by XX/XY is unchanging, sure. But it's only binary in a statistical sense ("everyone is either XX or XY except for the ones who aren't" is hardly a ringing scientific approach)

No, it really is. Either you have a Y chromosome and are male, or you don't and aren't. You can have all sorts of damage to the Y or the X, but if you don't have the Y, that's it. That's science.

 

[Julia9054]

No, it really is. Either you have a Y chromosome and are male, or you don't and aren't. You can have all sorts of damage to the Y or the X, but if you don't have the Y, that's it. That's science.

Not true - not that it is relevant to this thread.
Look up androgen insensitivity syndrome

 

[AuroraSaab]

I don't think that moral panics advance women's rights or liberation, and nothing you can write is going to persuade me that Trans Prisons Now is a feminist idea.

Your definition of moral panic is other women's definition of basic safeguarding. I don't think cheer leading to put male offenders in with some of society's most vulnerable women is very feminist either.

'Read some Angela Davis, FFS.'. .

I'm familiar with Angela Davis. She's an intersectional feminist - I'm not. As an American she understandably sees everything through the prism of race, including that the struggle of transwomen somehow mirrors the struggle of black women to be accepted. I disagree because I don't think separation (excluding men from certain situations to protect an oppressed group) is the same as segregation (excluding a whole race to perpetuate supremacy by an oppressor group). I don't find her arguments for abolishing prisons convincing either.

Non-binary doesn't have to have an objective truth for it to be a meaningful concept in the way people understand themselves. People, especially young people, try out new things in the search for new ways of being. Some of them are silly, some of them might be revolutionary. It isn't a threat to your safety if a teenager says it's important to them to be referred to as 'they'. Almost no-one thinks male sex offenders who identify as female should be housed with women prisoners. Meanwhile, it doesn't seem to cross your mind that most women prisoners, and a substantial proportion of men, shouldn't be inside at all.

Nobody is denying anyone's right to identify as they wish on a personal basis, just that how you view yourself - which is inevitably subjective and may vary - is not a sound basis on which to base legislation that affects others.

I'm happy to use people's chosen pronouns but it's out of politeness. Others may consider that they are not compelled to use someone's chosen pronouns because it requires them to be a prop in the validation of an ideology that they don't subscribe to.

"Almost no-one thinks male sex offenders who identify as female should be housed with women prisoners"

You've said you don't believe in special units ('trans prisons'). Where do you suggest they go?

The treatment of women in general in UK prisons does concern me. The topic of this thread is how people self identify though, not prisons. To suggest that it's not possible to care about 2 things at once is sheer 'whataboutery'.

 

[AuroraSaab]

You've kindly summarised your questions into bullets. I have converted them to numbers to give a bit more structure:

1. I simply don't think we've yet got the facts to support the assertion that Self id will mean an end to all single sex spaces and exemptions. If when the UK/English government comes up with proposals then they should certainly cover the long standing exemptions in Equality Law. That doesn't mean people should be permitted a veto on the professional roles adopted by trans women but that the law should be able to deal with such issues as actually and reasonably apply.
2. I cannot find the phrase 'living as a woman' in my long post yesterday. However if I use it (or living as a man) it has the same meaning as in S 2(1)(b) of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/section/2
3. I agree a proportionate response is needed - a matter for draft legislation. This is disproportionate because contrary to current law it treats transwomen as men. You have already said, I think in response to The Claude, that you do not favour winding back the GRA.
4. I suspect this depends on how you pose the question. Again, we're arguing from opposite premises as you are sticking to the line that, whatever their progression in the acquired gender transwomen are still men. I suspect the number of instances where a trans woman with a penis, an organ that incidentally they no more welcome than you do, allow it to be visible in an open changing space would be vanishingly small.

My grandchild is a boy but the point remains the same.

1. Stonewall want an end to all single sex exemptions under the Equality Act so it's not unreasonable to think this really means all single sex spaces. Again, if you are allowing self id, on what grounds will you say a transwoman can be excluded? That would be no different to the status quo, which trans activists vehemently reject.

2. Your link just says 'lived in the acquired gender' - it doesn't explain what that even means. How do you live as the opposite sex without it meaning stereotypes of femininity or masculinity?

3. I'm not against making getting a GRC easier and cheaper but the proposals for self id were done behind the scenes after lobbying by Stonewall and other trans groups. Trans groups were part of the consultations in to the GRA reform but no women's groups were officially consulted. It was only the fuss kicked up by the later public consultations that derailed this back room deal.

4. In what sense are transwomen not still men? They are men who identify as women. I think it's simply naive to believe some men won't take advantage of in effect making women's toilets unisex by claiming to be trans.

Again, it's not just about toilets. It's about an oppressor class (men) being able to opt into a class that are oppressed (women) and everything that entails, from changing rooms, to sports, to winning women's awards, to calling male rapists 'she'.

What is the difference between this and someone self identifying as black and winning an award aimed at the black community?

Why is Rachel Dolezal bad, and Eddie Izzard good?

 

[AuroraSaab]

No, it really is. Either you have a Y chromosome and are male, or you don't and aren't. You can have all sorts of damage to the Y or the X, but if you don't have the Y, that's it. That's science.

Exactly. I am not aware of any serious peer reviewed research that says sex isn't binary. It would be Nobel Prize winning stuff. There might be different secondary sexual characteristics but 99.8% of the time your observed sex at birth is correct. It's decided at conception in humans and youcan even tell a foetus's sex from the mother's blood at about 8 weeks.

'Reproductive function is more of a spectrum' .... how? There's only 2 functions in mammals - bodies set up to make eggs, and bodies set up to make sperm; impregnation and gestation.

On the spectrum, what are the other points that lie in between point 1, a body that has developed along a Mullerian pathway (female), and point 2, a body that has developed along a Wolfian pathway (male)?

(Intersex/DSD folk are still male or female, obviously)

Sex is binary. You can't change your sex. We can make accommodations (within reason) for people who wish to identify as the opposite sex, but it's obviously a legal fiction.

 

[newfhouse]

We can make accommodations (within reason) for people who wish to identify as the opposite sex, but it's obviously a legal fiction.

I don’t think anyone here is saying much different to this. Isn’t the more important argument about the extent of the reasonable accommodations?

 

[icowden]

Not true - not that it is relevant to this thread.
Look up androgen insensitivity syndrome

OK

Although people with AIS have XY (usual male pattern) chromosomes, the body does not respond to testosterone (the sex hormone) fully or at all. This prevents the sex development of a typical male.
A penis does not form or is underdeveloped. This means the child's genitals may develop as female, or are underdeveloped as male.
The child may have have fully or partially undescended testicles. But there will be no womb or ovaries.

As there is no womb or ovaries the person is an atypical male. It is a rare condition, and some PAIS / AIS people will be raised as female, but biologically they are an atypical male.

 

[AuroraSaab]

I don’t think anyone here is saying much different to this. Isn’t the more important argument about the extent of the reasonable accommodations?

I think that's the view of most of the general public, but I'm not sure what people on here are saying, to be honest. We seem to have people saying that transwomen are women but that you can still exclude them in certain circumstances - this isn't what self id means.