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I’d just like to take a small bite of one of the problems that occurs when having discussions with people who believe in the current gender fad. Let’s start with the biggest fish on the plate – what is the definition of being ‘Transgendred’. This from Wikipedia:
“Transgender people have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from the sex that they were assigned at birth.[1][2][3] Some transgender people who desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another identify as transsexual.[4][5]Transgender, often shortened as trans, is also an umbrella term; in addition to including people whose gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex (trans men and trans women), it may include people who are not exclusively masculine or feminine (people who are non-binary or genderqueer, including bigender, pangender, genderfluid, or agender).[2][6][7] Other definitions of transgender also include people who belong to a third gender, or else conceptualize transgender people as a third gender.[8][9] The term transgender may be defined very broadly to include cross-dressers.[10]
I stopped because I have no idea what a ‘gender identity’ is. So let’s define that.
“Gender identity is the personal sense of one’s own gender.[1] Gender identity can correlate with a person’s assigned sex at birth or can differ from it.[2]Gender expression typically reflects a person’s gender identity, but this is not always the case.[3][4] While a person may express behaviors, attitudes, and appearances consistent with a particular gender role, such expression may not necessarily reflect their gender identity. “All societies have a set of gender categories that can serve as the basis of a person’s self-identity in relation to other members of society.[6] In most societies, there is a basic division between gender attributes assigned to males and females,[7] a gender binary to which most people adhere and which includes expectations of masculinity and femininity in all aspects of sex and gender: biological sex, gender identity, and gender expression.[8] Some people do not identify with some, or all, of the aspects of gender assigned to their biological sex;[9] some of those people are transgender, non-binary, or genderqueer. Some societies have third gender categories.”
The first (of many) problems with these definitions is that they do not correspond to the reality we inhabit:
“Transgender people have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from the sex that they were assigned at birth”
This most basic premise is wrong. Sex is not “assigned” at birth. Sex observed at birth as obstetricians in the vast majority of cases can easily categorize members of the male sex class and members of the female sex class. It is worthwhile at this juncture to note that human beings cannot change the sex that they were born with, simply stated:
Biological sex is immutable.
So we have to note that right from the start, one of the foundational premises of trans-ideology is fundamentally flawed. Any argument based on the premise that sex is assigned at birth will necessarily be false. But, of course, there is just more than one flawed premise in the mix.
“in addition to including people whose gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex (trans men and trans women), it may include people who are not exclusively masculine or feminine (people who are non-binary or genderqueer, including bigender, pangender, genderfluid, or agender)“
It’s here that swirling morass of haphazard generalizations and faulty reasoning kick in. Gender identity is the ‘personal sense of one’s own gender’. What the hell does that actually mean? What is it like to experience the personal sense of one’s gender?
To be perfectly honest – I have no idea what it is like to experience my own gender. I know what it is like to be me, and my personality, but I have no intuitive sense of what my supposed gender identity is. Try it for yourself describe your ‘gender identity’ to yourself. Try it with this added challenge – describe your gender identity without using sex stereotypes. Here is a handy list you should avoid.
I’ll wait.
…
It would seem like the personal sense of one’s gender identity rests on the adoption of a particular set of negative sex stereotypes about the class of people you happen to be born into. That is what gender is; an arbitrary societally prescribed set of behaviours/expectations that are imposed on females and males in society. These social norms exist in society and are in no way present in human beings prior to social exposure. How do we know this? For instance we know that social gender norms change over time – the girl pink/boy blue situation was reversed or not present prior to the 1950’s. Thus, gender is something that is outside of us and we are exposed to it once we start interacting with society.
So how does one ‘identify’ with being female or male then, without resorting to the (mostly) negative sex stereotypes (a.k.a gender) that society imposes on people? Said another way, what does ‘feeling like’ a man or women feel like?
Sounds like nebulous bullshit to me.
“While a person may express behaviors, attitudes, and appearances consistent with a particular gender role, such expression may not necessarily reflect their gender identity. “All societies have a set of gender categories that can serve as the basis of a person’s self-identity in relation to other members of society.“
We need to approach the idea of ‘identity’ with a great deal of caution because ‘identity’ is inherently subjective and thus unreliable as an indicator of correspondence to reality.
“In most societies, there is a basic division between gender attributes assigned to males and females,[7] a gender binary to which most people adhere and which includes expectations of masculinity and femininity in all aspects of sex and gender: biological sex, gender identity, and gender expression.[8] Some people do not identify with some, or all, of the aspects of gender assigned to their biological sex;“
This sentence conflates the personalities we all have with gender identity and gender stereotypes. You as an individual in society are not a gatekeeper for the gendered expectations that are rightly or wrongly, imposed on you. Most certainly you can defy them, a man wearing pink for instance or a woman being aggressive, but your personal identification is irrelevant to societal expectations. Nor does adopting the stereotypes of the other class of people make you a member of that class of people. A man wearing a dress is still a man.
Should it be okay if a man wants to wear a dress? Absolutely. It should be encouraged as gender non compliant behaviour illustrates the coercive and arbitrary nature of the system we know as ‘gender’.
What wearing a dress for a man does not do is make him a woman.
This is tip of the iceberg level of what is going on in the faux-progressive areas of society. Feelings and the subjectivity inherent within them are being lauded over the empirical reality we all share. The implications for females in our society are quite foreboding, but that is another post.
Gender ideology is totalitarian in nature. There can be no debate, no compromise, and especially no questioning its tenets. Regular everyday people do not realize the poison pill that they swallow when they are told to ‘be kind’ and comply with the reactionary bullshit that is gender ideology. These are some of the questions that you are not supposed to ask, because the answer is almost always ‘because I say so’. So I’ve found a nice chart that will easily identify those that need attitude readjustments so you, my gentle readers, might not be alarmed when faced with this current batch of misogynistic nonsense that has gained so much traction in society.
Oh, and terf is an acronym – Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist – it is a slur like witch, bitch, c*nt et cetera used on uppity females that will not comply with the reactionary bullshit that is gender ideology.
Wow. The better idea might be to dispense with the toxic notion of gender (sex stereotypes) altogether and let men and women dress however they please. Wouldn’t that be nice?
The mask has been at least partially ripped off in the UK. The use of puberty blockers on children has been stopped and now requires the court approval to prescribe the experimental drugs (with no evidential link to their benefit) to children.
“Now, it may be that there is a genuine unmet medical need among adolescent girls of which clinicians had previously been unaware. It may also be that gender dysphoria and autism are co-morbidities that require an integrated approach to treatment. The problem, however, is no-one has done any research, so whether or not either is the case is simply unknown. It is entirely plausible for Tavistock to return in future litigation with a much stronger argument. For that to happen, however, research simply has to be done. You and I may be able to fly by the seat of our pants, but courts cannot and doctors should not.
Relatedly, the administration of puberty blockers progressed with a grim inevitability to the use of cross-sex-hormones; they did not provide “space to think” but rather seemed designed to ensure that future surgical interventions were more effective. Evidence from the Netherlands indicated, of the adolescents who started puberty suppression, only 1.9% did not proceed to cross-sex-hormones. Tavistock offered no alternative treatment paths, an aspect of the modern (and similarly unevidenced) fashion for “affirmative” treatment of gender dysphoria.
It’s worth making an aside here and noting the general problem of poor record-keeping and cavalier attitudes to evidence and data across a number of British institutions. Over and over again the EHRC, in its report on Labour anti-Semitism, observed a failure to complete the most basic administrative tasks. The same issue emerged in the Home Office during the Windrush scandal, and — as I wrote last year — in the Government’s frankly contemptuous behaviour before the Supreme Court in last year’s prorogation case.
A number of commentators noted that charities Mermaids and Stonewall were refused permission to intervene, and said this looked unfair. They made these observations without realising interveners are there to assist the court, and must provide evidence that is different from that already tendered. If all they do is repeat what Tavistock has already said, they serve no purpose apart from wasting court time, and court time is expensive.
What Mermaids and Stonewall wished to enter into evidence were accounts of positive experiences from young trans people treated with puberty blockers. However, Tavistock had already provided these; they are quoted at length in the judgment. Much of the would-be interveners’ argument was based on the idea that “the voice of the child” must be heard, repeatedly if necessary.
Bell’s lived experience was a tiny part of her case — and, indeed, by choosing judicial review rather than medical negligence, she made her personal circumstances (and those of other people) even less salient. A tort claim would have put her on the witness stand and investigated her treatment pathway because “pain and suffering” (one of the traditional heads of damage) is assessed subjectively when calculating potential damages in such a case.
It has become fashionable, of late, to valorise ‘lived experience’ from people keen to parade both their victimhood and their virtue. Unfortunately, lived experience by itself is not evidence in a court of law. Nor is the argument made by Mermaids that “every young person has the right to make their own decisions about their body” – something more is needed.
It is the role of medicine to heal the sick and leave the well alone, which is only possible via careful recourse to the scientific method and disinterested research. If this does not happen, it then becomes the law’s duty to ensure each and every litigant gets his or her due.”
This gender bullshit has to stop. The sooner the better. I only hope that Canada wakes the heck up and looks to the court precedent set in the UK before passing any more disastrous legislation (bill C-6).
Twitter usually isn’t the best place to find valuable insights into complex topics and ideas. I do like to be proven wrong though, and that was very much the case when I saw this thread by “H”. This person precisely identifies a several key points where the ideology of transgender has gone markedly afoul. Much has to do with the correspondence between their activism and narcissistic male entitlement.
Common threads do exist between feminism and the trans movement. The current focus though of putting the validation of (usually) men’s gender-delusions ahead of female rights makes progress in this area difficult at best.
One of the axis the transgender debate swirls around is access to washrooms and change-rooms. The argument from the TRA’s is simply this: A person should use the washroom of the gender (sex) they identify as. Please note I put the word sex in parenthesis there as it is one of huge linguistic obstacles in the argumentative form of the the debate, more on this aspect later (as in different post later).
The problems with this argument are multitudinous, but I hope to cover the main points of contention. Firstly the immutability of sex in the human species, secondly the effect of socialization on males and females, and thirdly the sex classes and how they interact in society.
It should go without saying, but yet it must be said – One cannot change their natal sex. Therefore it does not matter how many gendered stereotypical practices and mannerisms a man adopts, his quest to be a woman will never come to fruition. He shall always be male, despite whatever feelings of gender he happens to possess. Now certainly, given enough money and time under the plastic surgeon’s knife, a man can be made to look like a women, but looking like and being a woman reside in two completely different categories. Plus, there are no standards defining what a transwoman actually is and with proposed self-id laws all it takes is a simple declaration by man to say he is a woman. The potential for abusive males to use self-id to gain access to female only spaces is a clear and present danger to females in society.
Secondly from birth, males and females are treated differently by their parents, peers, and people in society. The patriarchal gender norms in which we are inculcated with do not magically get programed on day, but are a result of a constant exposure to a set of normative values, that by default, channel men into dominant positions and roles in society and women into submissive ones.
The life long exposure to this unequal gendered treatment is not forgotten with a simple declaration of gender. Thus, it is fairly common to see TRA’s being quite vocal and aggressive in their activism because as males they are used to their voices being heard the first time and their opinion actually mattering in social situations. So if the male socialization remains intact even after the nebulous transition process – whatever it may be – then the corrosive patriarchal attitudes toward women also remain intact, along with all the male behaviours (objectification, predation, et al). that necessitate female only spaces in the first place.
Thirdly, since we cannot change our sex class the assumptions of females regarding men identifying as women remain the same. Males are responsible for the vast majority of violence perpetrated against women in society, how they ‘identify’ with their gender is irrelevant to the safety of females. This reason alone is enough to preserve single sex spaces in society.
The twitter snip is just one facet of what men will say to justify the invasion of female spaces. The assertion Owen Jones make is risible from the start, because in most cases we can successfully identify members of the opposite sex. We’ve been doing it for thousands of years as it is part of the necessary task of keeping the species going. So no, no Genital Inspection Unit is necessary, men just need to keep out of female spaces.
I’m kinda sad that basic information needs to be reiterated. Gender is a toxic social construct that is harmful to women and men.
The solution is to get rid of gender stereotypes and let people be people with personalities. The end. It is that simple.
bleatmop
The Intransigent One
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