Transgender is it just me that is totally perplexed?

[8ball]

Erm.... It kind of is.

The rare cases of intersex are quite instructive of the way sex in animals actually works.

I don’t think denying reproductive biology is going to end anywhere good. We already have really strange talk of female penises and male vaginas. Also, if none of this stuff matters it would never make any sense that anyone would ever want to transition.

There are organisms that have a lot more than two sexes but humans aren’t one of them.

I’m not sure how saying this is hateful, reproductive biology has been used in the past as a stick to beat homosexuals with, but a lot of progress was achieved re: homophobia without having to “redefine” biology.

 

[HoratioCuthbert]

The rare cases of intersex are quite instructive of the way sex in animals actually works.

I don’t think denying reproductive biology is going to end anywhere good. We already have really strange talk of female penises and male vaginas. Also, if none of this stuff matters it would never make any sense that anyone would ever want to transition.

There are organisms that have a lot more than two sexes but humans aren’t one of them.

I’m not sure how saying this is hateful, reproductive biology has been used in the past as a stick to beat homosexuals with, but a lot of progress was achieved re: homophobia without having to “redefine” biology.

Who are you talking to?

 

[Treacle Toes]

Using terms like "non binary unicorns" as you did in this post

bimble said: ↑
"Yeah, well I am then. The word sexism means something, and it still exists, it means discriminations by sex. As in keeping people with vaginas in their place. The scandal of the week with that men-only charity fundraising do with everyone groping the 'hostesses': Why didn't the people working there just identify as non binary unicorns they'd have been fine."

might be pissing people off/upsetting etc equally as much as "complete and utter contempt for all trans people" is doing to you.

I ain't trying to dig at you but it comes across as dismissive and like you are making fun of people.

Openly admitting to taking the piss when challenged for posting a link to a random tumblr...

Why is anyone expected to ignore that?

 

[elbows]

I was looking for something else entirely on this thread, from around the weekend, when I spotted a reference to gaslighting. Since I was accused of gaslighting earlier today, I paid close attention, and now I understand why the term was thrown my way. This is the post I found from days ago....

Telling people things that they know aren't true and keeping telling them that until they think their perception is wrong.
So: telling a woman that a man in a dress is actually a woman and that she's mad and crazy and bigoted and wrong for believing that += gaslighting.

Well, no, and I could come out with the same stuff I said earlier about what a disgrace it is that people who care about rights and feminism and stopping abuses are willing to sacrifice the integrity of that term so readily. Especially when some of their other arguments are about how changes to language are undermining the rights of certain groups and their ability to discuss the injustices they face and press for change.

The reason gaslighting cannot be applied in this context is very simple and has nothing to do with the particular issues of this thread. The entire nature of debates involves people with beliefs arguing their point with others, disagreeing with others, trying to convince people that they have got something wrong, sowing seeds of doubt, disputing facts and evidence, and a hell of a lot of repetition. You cant have a proper debate without at least some of these things. And for all the similarities that may be spotted between that stuff and methods employed in gaslighting, the context is very different. And yes, people do scummy and manipulative things as part of debates at times, and some forms of gaslighting might involve a dishonest debate between two people in a relationship, where one of the participants manipulates things before or during the debate as part of the psychological abuse. Still doesnt mean this can magically be transferred to every other sort of debate.

 

[8ball]

Who are you talking to?

Who do you think? Read back a bit. Humans have two sexes for evolutionary reasons and I don’t think it is productive to deny this.

And the differential reproductive burden of the sexes has a relation to how women have often been oppressed. Feminists recognise this, and denying it is part of what gets some of their backs up.

Homosexuals were often castigated as ‘unnatural’ due to their inability to reproduce sexually. This was due to a confusion over ‘is’ and ‘ought’ combined with the assumption of the right of patriarchal society to control reproduction that we might hopefully be moving past now. Denying these realities are part of why some feminists feel threatened in my view. But they can and are speaking for themselves here - I hope we can keep it civil because we’re a bit fucked if we stop talking and go hide in our respective echo chambers.

There are lots of hardships involved with being transgender/transsexual, and acceptance is in short supply, but I can’t see it as helpful to deny biology in a way that cuts off potential allies, and I don’t think denial of basic realities ever leads anywhere good.

I like you and appreciate a lot of things you have said on this thread, and these are just my opinions. I don’t completely understand where transgender/transsexuality ‘comes from’, but I don’t understand where homosexuality ‘comes from’ either, I don’t think anyone does completely, and it’s not homophobic to say that.

I think trying to make a claim on the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ is likely to be a losing battle for a very small minority, as well as leading to formulations that fly in the face of facts. Sperm become female gametes, eggs become male gametes, the basis of structural oppression fades away in a mist of vagueness. Moving forward may require making new words but we need the old ones too.

 

[Thimble Queen]

Openly admitting to taking the piss when challenged for posting a link to a random tumblr...

Why is anyone expected to ignore that?

She's a nasty piece of work.

 

[co-op]

She's a nasty piece of work.

Get over yourself

 

[Treacle Toes]

Get over yourself

After you?

 

[smokedout]

Everyone has the right to describe males using masculine pronouns. Be thankful our society hasn't mandated that, yet.

Would you refuse to accept the acquired gender of one of your employees?

 

[co-op]

Would you refuse to accept the acquired gender of one of your employees?

Me, no as I think I’ve made clear.

Do you demand that I or others accept the word “cis” applies to us even though we reject the ideology that it stands on?

 

[smokedout]

Me, no as I think I’ve made clear.

Do you demand that I or others accept the word “cis” applies to us even though we reject the ideology that it stands on?

i wasn't asking you and I've discussed that at length.

 

[Vintage Paw]

A couple of things on the xx, xy thing: Sex redefined and Between the (Gender) Lines: the Science of Transgender Identity - Science in the News - plenty more that makes interesting reading that you can access through the most simple of google searches, and no doubt with access to journal databases even more stuff.

 

[co-op]

i wasn't asking you and I've discussed that at length.

You have? I’d forgotten. But a one word answer is too much work? Yes I have to accept it, no I can reject it?

Which?

 

[Thimble Queen]

A couple of things on the xx, xy thing: Sex redefined and Between the (Gender) Lines: the Science of Transgender Identity - Science in the News - plenty more that makes interesting reading that you can access through the most simple of google searches, and no doubt with access to journal databases even more stuff.

Thanks I've bookmarked those for reading later.

 

[HoratioCuthbert]

Who do you think? Read back a bit. Humans have two sexes for evolutionary reasons and I don’t think it is productive to deny this.

And the differential reproductive burden of the sexes has a relation to how women have often been oppressed. Feminists recognise this, and denying it is part of what gets some of their backs up.

Homosexuals were often castigated as ‘unnatural’ due to their inability to reproduce sexually. This was due to a confusion over ‘is’ and ‘ought’ combined with the assumption of the right of patriarchal society to control reproduction that we might hopefully be moving past now. This is part of why some feminists feel threatened in my view.

There are lots of hardships involved with being transgender/transsexual, and acceptance is in short supply, but I can’t see it as helpful to deny biology in a way that cuts off potential allies, and I don’t think denial of basic realities ever leads anywhere good.

I like you and appreciate a lot of things you have said on this thread, and these are just my opinions. I don’t completely understand where transgender/transsexuality ‘comes from’, but I don’t understand where homosexuality ‘comes from’ either, I don’t think anyone does completely, and it’s not homophobic to say that.

I think trying to make a claim on the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ though, is likely to be a losing battle for a very small minority, as well as leading to formulations that fly in the face of facts.

Thanks for the good spirited reply You might notice I am steadfastly avoiding going into some of what you mention yet, because I don't know where I stand. My feeling is it should be possible to allow transgender people to use their chosen pronoun without this infringing on womens rights and it should also be possible to acknowledge transmen have wombs-for example- whilst at the same time not tearing up decades of feminist thinking. But it is all so polarised isn't it? I have been sitting here today reading stuff on what marxist/socialist feminists have to say about transgender rights. If I can be any clearer on what I think I will come back to this!

 

[8ball]

A couple of things on the xx, xy thing: Sex redefined and Between the (Gender) Lines: the Science of Transgender Identity - Science in the News - plenty more that makes interesting reading that you can access through the most simple of google searches, and no doubt with access to journal databases even more stuff.

The first link is largely a pretty fascinating account of chimaerism, and the second is a largely speculative account of where trans identity ‘comes from’.

I think the first is biologically interesting, but it doesn’t say anything about human reproduction.

The second is a bit reminiscent of a lot of talk a little over 20 years ago about homosexuality (you don’t see that much of it nowadays precisely becuase gay people are so much more accepted. If you accept someone then the nuts and bolts become a lot less relevant.

This goes for some of the speculative implications of the first link too. These are really the’exceptions which prove the rule’ in the same manner which looking at people with particular kinds of brain damage tell us interesting things about how the brain works.

This is a long way from arguing that eggs can be male gametes and sperm
female gametes depending on how someone chooses to identify.

 

[Vintage Paw]

From the first link:

"There is a second way in which a person can end up with cells of different chromosomal sexes. James's patient was a chimaera: a person who develops from a mixture of two fertilized eggs, usually owing to a merger between embryonic twins in the womb. This kind of chimaerism resulting in a DSD is extremely rare, representing about 1% of all DSD cases."

 

[8ball]

Thanks for the good spirited reply You might notice I am steadfastly avoiding going into some of what you mention yet, because I don't know where I stand. My feeling is it should be possible to allow transgender people to use their chosen pronoun without this infringing on womens rights and it should also be possible to acknowledge transmen have wombs-for example- whilst at the same time not tearing up decades of feminist thinking. But it is all so polarised isn't it? I have been sitting here today reading stuff on what marxist/socialist feminists have to say about transgender rights. If I can be any clearer on what I think I will come back to this!

Cheers.

I agree with the pronouns thing but that is probably the most basic level of consideration we should have for each other. That we should accept everyone who doesn’t fit in with the expected binary is something I think should be self-evident too.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts if you wish to come back to this later.

 

[elbows]

I loved the first article, and I do not recognise the idea that its implications can be safely contained via the conclusion that it just shows 'exceptions which prove the rule'.

 

[HoratioCuthbert]

Interesting thoughts on this article. Don't have time to comment just noo.

For the vast majority of people it is difficult to see the social influence on biological sex. But there is greater variety associated with sex characteristics than can be accommodated by simply looking at genitalia, and the decision to use that method to record sex on a birth certificate and then to insist that such a record defines someone for the rest of their life is certainly contestable.

One complicating factor is that external genitalia are not the only sex characteristics. There are chromosomes, hormones, internal reproductive organs and secondary sex characteristics. Do these attributes always tie up neatly into a gender binary? Fine warns against a simplistic approach to the effect of the genetic and hormonal components of sex on the reproductive system, “even that developmental process [has been] described by one expert as a ‘balance’ rather than a binary system”.20 The article Fine refers to includes an account of a 70 year old man, the father of four children, having a routine hernia operation and discovering that he had a womb. Arthur Arnold, who studies sex differences at the University of California, Los Angeles says: “The main problem with a strong dichotomy [between male and female] is that there are intermediate cases that push the limits and ask us to figure out exactly where the dividing line is between males and females. And that is often a very difficult problem, because sex can be defined in a number of ways”.21
Commenting on how sex should be defined when different characteristics clash, Eric Vilain, director of the Center for Gender-Based Biology at UCLA, says: “My feeling is that since there is not one biological parameter that takes over every other parameter…gender identity seems to be the most reasonable parameter.” In other words, concludes the author, if you want to know what gender someone is, just ask.22

Her solution is to try to stop using the word gender. While I share Cameron’s desire to see a world in which gender is not a category of any importance, socialists must intervene in struggles as they concretely present themselves. In the context of the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act it is important to recognise that gender identity can exist without equating it to socialised gender norms or to a sexed brain.

. The formula often used to describe the difference between sex and gender is “Sex is biological and gender is socially constructed”. This differentiation highlights the profound social influences on the accepted norms for masculine and feminine behaviours. However, this formulation rests on a false separation between the biological and the social. Marxist biologists Steven Rose, Richard Lewontin and Leon Kamin argued against this dichotomy over 30 years ago: “The relation between organism and environment is not simply one of interaction of internal and external factors, but a dialectical development of organism and milieu in response to each other… All human phenomena are simultaneously social and biological”.11

Marxism, feminism and transgender politics – International Socialism

 

[8ball]

I loved the first article, and I do not recognise the idea that its implications can be safely contained via the conclusion that it just shows 'exceptions which prove the rule'.

I would disagree there. Firstly due to the rarity of such cases, and if you take any of these cases, let’s say the case of the man who had fathered several children before they found he also had a womb, that does not change the fact of the functioning part of his reproductive anatomy. He was identified as a man, lived as a man, fathered children as a man. The genetics of his cells and how this happens when embryos fuse is really interesting, but I think it’s “biology geek” interesting as opposed to saying
much about social relations.

So I don’t think fascinating (and rare) cases such as this are really challenging the idea of biological sex, especially in terms of reproduction (which is a very important point in terms of feminism), as being a ‘spectrum’.

But if you think I am missing something important, I’m listening.

Accepting people who don’t fit the usual pattern of things doesn’t need to mean denying there is a usual pattern to things.

 

[HoratioCuthbert]

Sorry, SWP I ken! And with that jobbie left on the threads, I bid y'all a good night!

 

[krtek a houby]

krek this is not the thread for you then.

.

 

[bimble]

Openly admitting to taking the piss when challenged for posting a link to a random tumblr...

Why is anyone expected to ignore that?

Of course i was taking the piss out of that list of 732 gender identities. Why is it not ok to do that are they sacred or something?

 

[Pickman's model]

Of course i was taking the piss out of that list of 732 gender identities. Why is it not ok to do that are they sacred or something?

You're really shit at taking the piss out of things: where you should be class you're crass instead

 

[bimble]

In 2016 there were just over 9.1 million children in the UK over 3 and under 16. The number of people from that age group referred to the Tavistock was 819. That's one in 12,000 children. Of these 32 children under 15 received hormone blockers on the early intervention pathway. I can't find the number for 15 year old but there were 254 referrals in this age group. Even if we assume they were all given hormone blockers this puts the number of under 16s given hormones blockers at one in 35,000. Most people will never meet a kid this has happened to. A large secondary school could expect to see one every 35 years. Children are not being 'transed' by anyone, they are trans, like you are, and the evidence so far shows that social transition, hormone blockers and being supported in their acquired gender by their family has very positive outcomes.

These figures are way below even the most conservative estimate of the trans population amongst adults. If there is a crisis it's that so many trans children are not being diagnosed or given any support.

You might find this interesting, some different figures from California:
When kids come in saying they are transgender (or no gender), these doctors try to help

The leading clinic there is run by the man who you quoted earlier, who used the twin study. He advocates age 14 as the cutoff point, says you should have made your mind up by then which gender you are, so hormone blockers should start long before than to give you time.

And whilst that list on tumblr might look silly its disingenuous to suggest those ideas are not changing the whole field, especially where young people are concerned.

Says the article:
"The type of services being requested has also changed. Clinicians say they are no longer taken aback by youths seeking some kind of boutique treatment — often “just a touch of testosterone” for an androgynous, nonbinary identity.

“It’s the children who are now leading us,” said Diane Ehrensaft, the director of mental health for the clinic. “They’re coming in and telling us, ‘I’m no gender.’ Or they’re saying, ‘I identify as gender nonbinary.’ Or ‘I’m a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I’m a unique gender, I’m transgender. I’m a rainbow kid, I’m boy-girl, I’m everything.’ In fact, the entire medical field is playing catch-up.."

 

[mojo pixy]

Things are changing fast, kids are going on tumblr and identifying as trans for reasons totally different from what might have motivated folks years ago, I hope its ok to acknowledge this.

What reasons were people giving years ago, and what is changing do you think?

I think you do misunderstand me. The point I was making is that I think the backlash will come from ordinary people. I specifically mentioned concerns over the way children are being transed.

Ordinary people? Are we here not ordinary people? What other kinds of people are there then? Special people? Who are they?

Like I said, I've been doing this for decades, so no I'm not changing my language for you or anyone else.

So you wouldn't mind people saying poofter, nigger, bitch, all those words we now consider taboo and / or offensive for very good reasons? Who else doesn't have to change their language for anyone else's politics?

Rod Liddle another newfound friend and ally of the “gender critical”. Very principled of the “feminists” in his piece to give him quotes attacking Momentum and comparing trans people to the Pedophile Information Exchange.
Women come last in Labour’s deranged victim hierarchy | The Spectator

Great line from that article: ''And there’s a certain pleasure to be gained from seeing the likes of Linda Bellos and Germaine Greer comprehensively outvictimed.'' - what a super feminist ally Rod Liddle is, eh?

 

[krtek a houby]

Ordinary people? Are we here not ordinary people? What other kinds of people are there then? Special people? Who are they?

People who can now get away with saying "trannies, trannies, trannies", it would appear.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

People who can now get away with saying "trannies, trannies, trannies", it would appear.

I thought it was acceptable for minority groups to reclaim words used against them?

 

[mojo pixy]

Is it though? Acceptable, I mean? Or is it understandable, but still not really that acceptable really? Not all people represented by that kind of stuff agree with it or appreciate it.