Cont: Trans Women are not Women 3

[LondonJohn]

FWIW, I was asking you to give a more detailed explanation, rather than a tautological one. Even the one in the link you provided is very vague - like I said, it defines gender as a social construct, which is fine, but it then says the construct is based on attributes that are labeled masculine and feminine.

Which is great, but it leaves us with the question of what masculine and feminine are in the first place. Especially in the context of discussions regarding transgender identity, where it's based on an internal perception of self that is not in alignment with one's sex.

When a female person says "I feel like a man" we can certainly infer that their gender identity is that of a man. But when that same female person wishes to wear dresses and makeup and to present themselves as female, and says that they have no desire or interest in trying to pass as male... then one has to wonder what exactly they think "man" means in the first place. What is it that they feel that makes them identify as a man? What is their view of masculinity? And if they want other people to treat them as a man, and allow them into private male spaces, it seems like there should be a reasonable description of "man" and "masculinity" that goes along with that, wouldn't you think?

Saying "I feel like a man" isn't, by itself, useful or meaningful.

It comes up in this discussion in particular, because the traditional dictionary definition of "woman" as an adult human female has been dismissed. Beyond that, definitions of woman as being a combination of biological factors and lived experience within society have also been rejected.

Even if none of us fits the mold perfectly, I think all of the natal women in this thread can describe common experiences of being a woman, things that we perceive as being directly relevant and pertinent elements of womanhood. But we've been told that our view of what "woman" means is irrelevant and incorrect.

Which does leave me at a bit of an impasse. If people born and raised as woman, who are female, are told that their understanding and description of what "womanhood" means is irrelevant... then what does it mean? A response of "it's how I feel on the inside" just is not a sufficient answer.

1) It's not vague at all from my perspective - I (a cis, hetero man) understand it perfectly.

2) I wasn't responding to your post; I was responding specifically to posts from another person (and, even more specifically, to the tone of those posts from the other person).

3) IMO, it'll probably be somewhat difficult to continue an educated debate on this whole subject matter if we can't even move beyond an understanding of the defninitions relevant to the topic.

 

[Emily's Cat]

On a related note... I haven't had a good description of what "woman" means. I do, however, have a transwoman acquaintance who provided a fairly acceptable description of her personal experience. She was pretty clear that she didn't have a definition of woman that makes any sense. From a young age, she liked "girly" things, even though she knows they're very stereotypical. She always felt more comfortable around females than around males. And mostly, she said she was constantly and persistent surprised to see a penis when she looked in the mirror. Logically, she knew it was there and attached, but she never expected it. It didn't match her mental image of herself. Even though she knew that the mirror wasn't lying to her, it made her feel perpetually disconnected from herself as well as from the world.

 

[LondonJohn]

Most of us who are well informed are already aware that gender identity ideology has captured all the major institutions.

Ahhh I see. So your position (which, unless I'm mistaken, is signalled by your use of the word "captured" in a pejorative manner) is:

The official definitions and classifications are (I have decided) of no actual value or "real truth" - they are merely the manifestations, on the part of those official institutions, of having pandered to the whims of special interest groups for reasons which are not primarily related to "trying to frame definitions and concepts in a way which best represents society as it really is"?


Is that anywhere close to the way you see it?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Actually I think Long Cho has a bit of a point about transitioning being a canvas for others. No idea about the other stuff she says.

I am, however, mocking Boudicca's views on wanting to be treated like a woman by society, but not wanting to be treated the way society often treats women. It goes back to the whole problem of not having a coherent definition.

Despite my periodic bouts of anger in here, I still don't think that mocking is going to get us to a coherent definition.

What you mention though, that's a part of my distance when it comes to trans issues. It's exactly the fact that most natal women don't want to be treated the way that society often treats us. It's not good for us, it's a barrier. The gender roles we're presented with, the childhood behavioral conditioning that we face, and the way we are treated by society in general as being less important and having less valued voices overall - those are things we want to go away. But a lot of those stereotypes that are focused on physical appearance and "feminine" behavior are things I often see in transwomen*. They reinforce exactly the same gender bias that I and most other natal women want to get rid of.

*Don't get me started on drag queens, their rendition of femininity is so very much worse.

The truth is, Boudicca doesn't want to be treated like a woman. She doesn't want to be sexually objectified. She doesn't want to be paid 75 cents on the dollar. She doesn't want to be dismissed from consideration for positions of authority and power. She doesn't want to be thought of as the weaker sex, or the homemaker, or the babysitter... Or does she?

As a woman, I truly hope that's not what she desires.

 

[Emily's Cat]

3) IMO, it'll probably be somewhat difficult to continue an educated debate on this whole subject matter if we can't even move beyond an understanding of the defninitions relevant to the topic.

I'll ignore your tone for the moment, and simply note that this is exactly the problem. The definitions themselves are not meaningful and convey nothing useful.

You claim that you understand it perfectly. Please elaborate for the rest of us who don't.

 

[LondonJohn]

It's still awfully vague.



So gender is a social construction... okay, I can accept that... based on labels of masculinity and femininity. So... what does "masculine" and "feminine" mean? What behaviors and attributes are being referred to?

They mean, in effect, this:

Typically, a male (a cis man) gets, in part, externally defined by society as someone who engages (or should engage) in "masculine" behaviours and actions.

So, to take some deliberately simplistic examples: men are viewed by society to be the people to whom (say) a train carriage with six woman and the one man might be expected to turn, if another man came into the carriage and started pestering the women. Or: a man would be the person whom society would view as the more likely - in a household containing a man and a woman - to go out to the garage in the middle of a rainy night to reset the electrical fuse box.

These are the sorts of things (as I said, deliberately simplistic in my examples, in an attempt to illustrate the concept more easily) which society tends to label as "masculine" attributes, behaviours and expectations.

 

[caveman1917]

LOL you think that providing a link to the UK Government definitions qualifies as "appealing to authority"?! (Hint: that's not what "appealing to authority" means, even if you think that's what it means).

It's honestly neither here nor there to me (or, I'd imagine, to society) that you either cannot or will not learn the correct definitions of male/female and man/woman in a gender identity context. I certainly don't have the inclination, the will, or the desire to help to educate you any further. Reject the ONS article totally if you so wish, for whatever reasons you cook up.

I mean, I think it's more than a little *unusual* to choose to participate in a debate on gender identity issues when one either cannot or will not also choose to learn the correct definitions of terms - but maybe that's just me. See ya!

There is no "gender identity context" - that's just something you made up because you don't like the implications of the actual correct definitions of the terms male/female as they've been provided to you again and again in this thread, the latest time was just a page or 2 ago.

See ya!

 

[LondonJohn]

I'll ignore your tone for the moment, and simply note that this is exactly the problem. The definitions themselves are not meaningful and convey nothing useful.

You claim that you understand it perfectly. Please elaborate for the rest of us who don't.

That's like saying "please elaborate on the meaning of "wall" because I still don't understand it".

The definitions which I have explained over something like the past couple of days within this thread, and the definitions used by the UK Government which are explained in that ONS article, are perfectly clear and understandable to me. And I cannot even attempt to explain them in any other way than to use the same sorts of explanations which you've already said you cannot understand.

So going back to "wall": If I was asked to define & explain "wall" in the context of construction, I might say something like "a wall is a physical structure, typically of some length and either straight or curved, whose important attribute is to serve as the division between two spaces; in a typical house, the built structure dividing two bedrooms is a wall; and the built structure which separated the Chinese-controlled lands of the 17th Century from non-Chinese-controlled tribes is also a wall".

If you were to come back to me and say "No, I still don't understand what a wall is in a construction context - please can you elaborate", I'd be at something of a loss as to how to approach that request.....


ETA: what I wrote was not meant to be anything other than a simple statement of fact: it's intrinsically (and extrinsically for that matter) difficult to have a debate on any subject when there's no shared understanding of the terms of reference used within that subject. That's just a truth.

 

[LondonJohn]

I wonder if *certain* posters here have even actually opened and read that ONS article, let alone made a sincere effort to assimilate its contents......?

 

[Emily's Cat]

One of the problems we face is that we are just viewed as sexual objects by men.

Circling back to this... I'm going to blame this on whatever strange adolescents are making the animated and video-game-based bits on pornhub. There is some strangely large volume of female characters who get penises stuck onto them when they get made into fan-fic porn. I just don't know why.

 

[LondonJohn]

Circling back to this... I'm going to blame this on whatever strange adolescents are making the animated and video-game-based bits on pornhub. There is some strangely large volume of female characters who get penises stuck onto them when they get made into fan-fic porn. I just don't know why.

Huh??? That's a thing? Gosh.

I'm assuming you're not being entirely serious. But regardless, obviously the sort of objectification that Boudicca90's taking about long pre-dates the internet, let alone niche areas of webporn sites

 

[Emily's Cat]

Ahhh I see. So your position (which, unless I'm mistaken, is signalled by your use of the word "captured" in a pejorative manner) is:

The official definitions and classifications are (I have decided) of no actual value or "real truth" - they are merely the manifestations, on the part of those official institutions, of having pandered to the whims of special interest groups for reasons which are not primarily related to "trying to frame definitions and concepts in a way which best represents society as it really is"?


Is that anywhere close to the way you see it?

It might be worth noting that some of the major players in the development of the official views you linked to are activist groups with political links. It's in the background for the formation of the definitions and views, linked to in your page.

Gender identity workshop: summary of discussions

The workshop was attended by representatives from:

• special interest groups and members representing the trans community (for example, Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES), Stonewall, Mermaids)
• national health organisations
• public bodies and organisations with equalities responsibilities (for example, Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and Government Equalities Office (GEO))
• local government
• academics and researchers
• the UK Statistics Offices – Office for National Statistics (ONS), National Records of Scotland (NRS) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA)

What it doesn't include is representatives from scientific communities.

 

[Elaedith]

Ahhh I see. So your position (which, unless I'm mistaken, is signalled by your use of the word "captured" in a pejorative manner) is:

The official definitions and classifications are (I have decided) of no actual value or "real truth" - they are merely the manifestations, on the part of those official institutions, of having pandered to the whims of special interest groups for reasons which are not primarily related to "trying to frame definitions and concepts in a way which best represents society as it really is"?


Is that anywhere close to the way you see it?

Not exactly, but somewhat. Gender identity ideology is associated with postmodernist deconstruction and priority of ideology over science. It emerged from the humanities (e.g. gender studies) and has attached itself to research findings only when these fit or can be made to appear to fit the narrative.

This resource provides a reasonable overview.

The Corrosive Impact of Transgender Ideology

(I am not particularly a fan of Civitas and I am not politically conservative. However, I can't find anything that gives a better overview of the key issues in one document).

 

[Rolfe]

It was appalling, and deeply disturbing. There was a fair bit described about her view of being trans, being largely based on "sissy porn". It really seems like she (?) views femininity through the lens of a 12 year old who got exposed to some really atrocious porn! Her comments on why people identify as trans were remarkable offensive and insulting. [...]

ETA: I put the (?) in there, because I really, really have a hard time thinking of this viewpoint as something coming from a woman at all.

Not a woman. A pretty text-book example of autogynaephilia. The mental image these men have of their ideal woman, whom they are striving to become, tends to turn most women's stomachs.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Huh??? That's a thing? Gosh.

I'm assuming you're not being entirely serious. But regardless, obviously the sort of objectification that Boudicca90's taking about long pre-dates the internet, let alone niche areas of webporn sites

Oh no, I'm being entirely serious. There is a LOT of it. It can be challenging to find video-game themed porn that isn't either rough gay sex bordering on rape, or in which all of the female characters have penises.

I'm sure it predates it, but there's been a dramatic increase in this over the last decade or so. Kind of a bummer for straight chicks that like video games.

 

[Rolfe]

Gender reassignment surgery doesn’t change one’s sex?

Well, no. Nothing can change the sex of a mammalian body. It's immutable.

 

[caveman1917]

I wonder if *certain* posters here have even actually opened and read that ONS article, let alone made a sincere effort to assimilate its contents......?

The one that claimed that sex is based on unspecified genetic/hormonal properties and is "assigned at birth"? Yeah it was hilarious, as these two statements together imply that every child receives genetic and hormonal testing at birth.

 

[Rolfe]

I can't believe I never thought of this before: Could part of the problem of definitions be that men don't actually know what it means to be a woman?

Got it in one. Men who identify as trans are trying to conform to their own fantasy of "woman". It bears virtually no relationship to the actuality of being a woman.

 

[d4m10n]

Is this really so difficult? Or are you, just perhaps, being wilfully obtuse?

A post number would suffice here. In an argument about what key terms (e.g. "man") should mean, don't be shy about what you think.

 

[LondonJohn]

Not exactly, but somewhat. Gender identity ideology is associated with postmodernist deconstruction and priority of ideology over science. It emerged from the humanities (e.g. gender studies) and has attached itself to research findings only when these fit or can be made to appear to fit the narrative.

This resource provides a reasonable overview.

The Corrosive Impact of Transgender Ideology

(I am not particularly a fan of Civitas and I am not politically conservative. However, I can't find anything that gives a better overview of the key issues in one document).

Thanks. It's a pretty long document (and it appears at a glance that it has no sort of "executive summary"), so I'll try to give it a read tomorrow (it's now gone midnight here, and I have to be up early tomorrow).

The small part I did look at made it seem like the paper was primarily concerned with trans-activism, and what it sees as the corrosive impact upon women and - in particular - children. And I'd say that this is a very, very different issue from the clinical approach to gender identity, where the current medical consensus is that gender dysphoria is a valid condition (and that therefore people who have been diagnosed as living this condition should be properly - and decently/sensitively - accepted and accounted for within society).