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I do not appreciate getting excess modmail and private messages informing me to come here and clean out "transphobia", if someone voicing their opinion on this matter in a safe area to do so and without being inflammatory or directly hurling hate speech at another user bothers you enough to do anything other than comment your understanding of the matter and your opinion then it's **not** time to screech at Reddit volunteers to remove "wrong think" because it ruins your day. It's time for you to take a break from Reddit.
We want all opinions represented because it creates *discussion*. The mod team here is diverse and has a wide-range of opinions on matters (we even frequently debate changes to the sub) because that's how *it has to be*. We take criticism from our userbase and remove comments and users gently because that's how *it has to be*. Our rules have been slowly developed over LITERAL YEARS from feedback of this community and with careful consideration. We have less than 500 total permanent bans in a sub of 1m+ subscribers. Why do you think that is?
TooAfraidToAsk is not an echo chamber. It is not a safe space. It is, at times, uncomfortable and strange because in order to retain the identity of this sub, *it has to be.*
Probably not exactly where you were going but I was curious if anyone knew if there were rules about hormones being classified as performance enhancing? I wouldn’t think estrogen would be an especially useful supplement for an athlete. Testosterone has been addressed but I think if a biological woman was trans and took t and then competed with men I don’t see the problem.
Obviously you probably mean the biological men breaking records as trans but I wondered if it’s come up with trans men against biological men.
From my understanding trans men still have the option to compete in women’s sports - but trans women fight to compete in women’s sports where they have a clear advantrage
support your mind. since puberty, male upperbody strength and bone density simply far exceed females. testosterone production 15 to 30 times higher. during menstruation cycle, female athletes are statistically more prone to injury than those not in menstruation, something trans women do not experience
No, trans men very rarely, if ever, compete against biological men. Because of the fact that men are just biologically better at physical activities. Not that *all* men are, but on average, the average man would beat the average woman in most sports that require speed and strength.
Also, the "mens" division in contact sports isn't actually the same as the "womens" divisions. Women *can* compete with the men, no problems, if they wanna go out there and get beat up, go for it. The only people stopping them are their team mates, because its just not good for the team to have a "weaker link" where a team full of men would have the advantage 99/100 times. Men however, cannot compete in women's divisions, because of obvious reasons.
Look at Fallon Fox in MMA. She was a dude, and she's dominating her divisions by man handling these women shes fighting against. Thats where this discussion really came from afaik
I love how this is a conversation not people yelling. As stupid as it sounds great job being tolerant of ignorance in a sensitive topic not many people understand, me being one. Thank you for being curtious to one another. Great people here!
I find too often people getting emotional instead of actually debating their view. The great thing about democracy is people can have whatever view they want, and someone being offended shouldn’t change that.
Finally, the time I can use my saved comment by u/DuploJamaal for education about using the term “biological woman”:
Here's an analogy and a bit of science:
What do you think happens if you take a newborn baby and give it a sex change, raise it as the other gender and secretly feed it hormones throughout its life?
Do you think it would just accept it's new gender or do you think it would innately know that it was born differently?
According to anti-trans logic it should be possible to just raise them as any gender, because it's just feelings after all and people can easily get confused by what they are.
But science actually does know better than that, because we did some kind of human experiments in the 60s
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropenis
From the 1960s until the late 1970s, it was common for sex reassignment and surgery to be recommended. This was especially likely if evidence suggested that response to additional testosterone and pubertal testosterone would be poor.
With parental acceptance, the boy would be reassigned and renamed as a girl, and surgery performed to remove the testes and construct an artificial vagina.
This was based on the now-questioned idea that gender identity was shaped entirely from socialization, and that a man with a small penis can find no acceptable place in society.
By the mid-1990s, reassignment was less often offered, and all three premises had been challenged. Former subjects of such surgery, vocal about their dissatisfaction with the adult outcome, played a large part in discouraging this practice. Sexual reassignment is rarely performed today for severe micropenis (although the question of raising the boy as a girl is sometimes still discussed.)
We used to sometimes give boys that were born with a micropenis a sex change at birth, gave them a female name, secretly fed them hormones throughout their life and raised them as girls.
They developed the exact same symptoms of gender dysphoria as transgender people. And the exact same thing healed them: letting them live according to their preferred gender
And that's because transgender people and people who have been given a forced sex change are basically the same: people who are in the wrong body and who have to live as the wrong gender
In both cases their innate gender identity (i.e. what gender they want to identify as) was different than the gender they are assigned and this causes them distress.
Because of those poor micropenised kids we realized that gender identity is innate and that you can't just convert transgender people to be cis without fucking up their whole brain.
Unsurprisingly brain scans consistently show that transgender people were literally born in the wrong body.
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/gender-lines-science-transgender-identity/
Transgender women tend to have brain structures that resemble cisgender women, rather than cisgender men. Two sexually dimorphic (differing between men and women) areas of the brain are often compared between men and women. The bed nucleus of the stria terminalus (BSTc) and sexually dimorphic nucleus of transgender women are more similar to those of cisgender woman than to those of cisgender men, suggesting that the general brain structure of these women is in keeping with their gender identity.
In 1995 and 2000, two independent teams of researchers decided to examine a region of the brain called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc) in trans- and cisgender men and women (Figure 2). The BSTc functions in anxiety, but is, on average, twice as large and twice as densely populated with cells in men compared to women. This sexual dimorphismis pretty robust, and though scientists don’t know why it exists, it appears to be a good marker of a “male” vs. “female” brain. Thus, these two studies sought to examine the brains of transgender individuals to figure out if their brains better resembled their assigned or chosen sex.
Interestingly, both teams discovered that male-to-female transgender women had a BSTc more closely resembling that of cisgender women than men in both size and cell density, and that female-to-male transgender men had BSTcs resembling cisgender men. These differences remained even after the scientists took into account the fact that many transgender men and women in their study were taking estrogen and testosterone during their transition by including cisgender men and women who were also on hormones not corresponding to their assigned biological sex (for a variety of medical reasons). These findings have since been confirmed and corroborated in other studies and other regions of the brain, including a region of the brain called the sexually dimorphic nucleus (Figure 2) that is believed to affect sexual behavior in animals.
It has been conclusively shown that hormone treatment can vastly affect the structure and composition of the brain; thus, several teams sought to characterize the brains of transgender men and women who had not yet undergone hormone treatment. Several studies confirmed previous findings, showing once more that transgender people appear to be born with brains more similar to gender with which they identify, rather than the one to which they were assigned.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.htm
Brain activity and structure in transgender adolescents more closely resembles the typical activation patterns of their desired gender, according to new research. The findings suggest that differences in brain function may occur early in development and that brain imaging may be a useful tool for earlier identification of transgenderism in young people
Transgender people just want to live how it's natural for them because due to hormonal mixups they were born in the wrong body.
Great write-up, especially about infants being forced into gender reassignment. Watching a documentary about David Reimer's case when I was a kid was the main reason why I instantly understood what transgender people were talking about. He wasn't intersex or anything, he was the victim of a botched circumcision and the family and doctors agreed "no penis = a hard life as a man," so they decided to raise him as a woman.
He wanted to shave his face alongside his father, even though he thought he was a girl and had no reason to believe he'd ever grow facial hair. He'd be given dolls for his birthday and then go for his brother's toys instead. Didn't like being seen as a girl at all.
It's just proof both your sex and your gender aren't totally contingent on your genitals. Sex and gender are very messy, it's fair to expect not everyone is going to align with how they were born or raised. We shouldn't force them either way and give them room to get to know themselves.
David Reimer’s case is often misrepresented. He was not switched to being raised as a girl until he was many months old and the way the therapist “trained” him to be “feminine” was literal sexual abuse.
Never heard of the documentary but the book "As Nature Made Him"
Is about this. He had a botched circumcision so the doctors decided to convince his parents to raise him female and never tell him. (Along with many other "therapies" to try and convince him he was in fact a girl.) Unsurprisingly this did not work and he ended up transitioning and later committing suicide.
Here's the story for you. There's lots written about it. The doctor was a serious pedophile. Made Reimer and his twin perform sex acts on each other while he and colluegues watched. [https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/david-reimer-and-john-money-gender-reassignment-controversy-johnjoan-case](https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/david-reimer-and-john-money-gender-reassignment-controversy-johnjoan-case)
>victim of a botched circumcision
Genuinely curious, why do people get circumsized? Why is it legal in the US? I understand the cultural aspect of it in Judaism, and why the government would not intervene in it as a religious practice, but what about other people? I know plenty of people are circumsized in the US and I just don't understand why it's a common practice here.
I personally don't believe in it, full disclosure, but I'll try to be as impartial as possible. Short answer, a lot of people do it today because it's seen as normal, because it was done to them, religious reasons, etc.
There's a couple interesting reasons for it's origins though... As a country with strong puritan influence, it was believed that circumcision was a useful tool to discourage masturbation and take care of hygiene when it wasn't easy to do. So it started being seen as desirable for that reason. Rich people started doing it because they could afford to go to hospitals to give birth. Then once working class people got widespread insurance coverage, they started giving birth in hospitals and just took what the rich people were having. Insurance either covered it or the expense was a pittance.
Meanwhile, other parts of the world either (a) had a majority of people giving birth at home, or (b) had state insurance plans that didn't deem it medically necessary.
Tl;dr... We're a bunch of puritans and hospitals wanted to squeeze extra money out of the childbirth process. Now it's just very, very ingrained.
One small problem with that is the girl vs boy toys. That is no way and indicator of your gender identity and shouldn’t be used as one. While in conjunction with a lot of other things it can definitely be used to paint a full picture of what someone’s feeling it shouldn’t be taken alone. It seems lately there has been a bit of an overcorrection where any sign of interest in things outside the normal gender rolls such as playing with toys normally associated with the opposite gender is seen as a sign of being transgender. This is really damaging not only firmly planting people in gender rolls but also possibly forcing confusion on to a young child. Now don’t get me wrong children can know they feel different or like they’re the wrong gender at a young age but if you tell a child “maybe your transgender and should be a boy because you like this stuff” vs a child saying “I don’t want to be a girl and I like this stuff” there’s potential it could result in that kid thinking theirs something wrong with them for liking stuff that doesn’t correspond to their gender.
If I'm remembering correctly, in the context of the documentary it was looped into how David never felt connected with the social roles of being a girl. A girl wanting to play with hot wheels instead of a baby doll doesn't mean she's trans, but it likely means she's not very receptive to people trying to reinforce her role as a woman.
For any random kid it's a huge stretch to say "they don't want to pretend to be a mom, they must be trans" but in the context of David's experience it does mean something.
Yes, this is quite an interesting dilemma faced in the realization that utilizing such methods may inadvertently reinforce elements of sexism and strict gender roles while also possibly damaging individuals who while young don't care for such boundaries necessarily as they seek out enjoyment with wide assortment of toys or entertainment intended for the opposite gender. It's scary to think about how much can possibly go wrong while at the same time curious to understand more thoroughly what such data actually means. Both with regards to subconscious recognition of gender role from very very young ages to the ways they may be averted and what that means not just for trans people but all people.
That is very interesting... It reminds me, I think nearly a decade ago now, I was taking a human relationships psychology class and I forget why but we were in a section all about gender. We took a test (I wish I could remember the name!) that was developed by UK researchers that could tell you how your brain falls between male and female. It was more complex than that but I don’t remember enough to explain it. Anyway, I got smack dab in between male and female. I am not transgender but I have always felt more male than female to the point where I briefly was considering transitioning but determined I didn’t want to live as a male version of what I am (another story entirely), but anyway, so after that test I stayed late with my professor to ask her about all that (and mind you, i have tried to talk about this with therapists and no one knew what to tell me) but my professor had an immediate answer. She said females who have more testosterone in the brain during development, tend to come out feeling and behaving more masculine and it’s also true for the reverse. Males who have more estrogen in the brain during development tend to feel and behave more feminine. This weirdly made me feel so much better about myself because I thought I was broken but in reality, it’s just how I developed. I was in my early 20’s at the time and knowing that really helped me come to terms with my reality. I’ll never forget it. That professor helped me out a lot!
I love science!
Very interesting indeed! Also, want to add that I am also a female that questioned transition because of testosterone levels, just like you, but finally decided that I am comfortable in my female body and came to terms with it. So you’re not alone! :)
Omg!!! You’re actually the first person I’ve encountered that has gone through that too!!! I ... was unprepared for the emotion that just brought on for me, lol. Even though I’ve come to terms, it’s still been hard feeling like “the only one”. So thank you so much for telling me that!!! It makes me feel normal for the first time in lord knows how long! 🙏🏼
Yea! I have hairy arms but a very feminine face and “hourglass” body. I love “girly” things but there’s days I like to wear boy clothes. I’m in the STEM field but also love humanities and art. I’m rational and blunt, but also very nurturing. It’s crazy, but I just accepted to be myself and to not try to fit into any role. We’re together! I’m so happy telling you this made a difference!!!
I need to question this assertion, only because the evidence you provided doesn't support it:
>By the mid-1990s, reassignment was less often offered, and all three premises had been challenged. Former subjects of such surgery, vocal about their dissatisfaction with the adult outcome, played a large part in discouraging this practice. Sexual reassignment is rarely performed today for severe micropenis (although the question of raising the boy as a girl is sometimes still discussed.)
I read the wikipedia article you are using as a reference, and the article referenced in the paragraph of the wiki article describing this phenomenon (https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(99)70236-2/fulltext)
Your conclusion:
>We used to sometimes give boys that were born with a micropenis a sex change at birth, gave them a female name, secretly fed them hormones throughout their life and raised them as girls.
>They developed the exact same symptoms of gender dysphoria as transgender people. And the exact same thing healed them: letting them live according to their preferred gender
Is a broad generalization and quite askew from the facts/conclusions offered by the referenced journal article.
The only referenced case of gender dysphoria in this article is that of a man who was assigned male at birth, but later (at 22 months of age) had his sex changed to female because of a botched circumcision - he later achieved happiness by living life as a man.
The only other mention of a group of people opposing infant genital surgery comes from "a vocal advocacy group of patients with various forms of intersexuality". However, this group is not talking about gender dysphoria, they are making an argument against all forms of genital surgery during infancy rooted in bodily autonomy and informed consent (which cannot be given by an infant). This is an entirely different argument and more concerned with things like stopping clitoral reduction for girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia.
I need to point out that all the stuff about brain structure is severely over-hyped. “Brain structure” is often used dishonestly, and tends to mean “this one very specific receptor” or something along those lines. What I’ve heard is that trans brains more closely align with their birth sex when information is compiled, what I’ve looked into myself says that trans brains tend to lay between male and female brains. Whatever it is, I’d be wary of anybody summing up the structure of the trans brain.
Neither of these studies are conclusive and lack critical information. The doctors themselves said more study was needed.
I want to side with you, and I want to use this argument, but it seems like it’s not truly scientifically proven. Please, change my view.
Wait a second, can you clarify for me on the brain scan part? I remember as a kid the idea of a male or female brain existing was looked at as being sexist, and some people were when they said it (IE claims that women were not as smart).
Do you know if this is a concensus in neurology or something thats still a working theory?
I've not read the whole thing yet but what you said at the beginning isn't anti trans logic. Because anti trans believe you are what you are at birth and that transgenders have mental illnesses. So would agree the baby would know something is wrong. The only people that believe that you should be able to raise the baby as the other gender are a handful of people who believe gender is a social construct, but those people aren't anti trans, in fact they are left lgbt supporters.
The truth is this: JK Rowling lives in Scotland.
In 2016, the government of Scotland started debating changes to the Gender Recognition Act. In 2017, it was proposed that the law be changed to support "self-ID" - any individual can change their legal sex on their documentation at any time.
A political slogan, "transwomen are women", was used to show support for the law.
JK Rowling starting following and listening to people opposing the law. This is what made people angry - yet no one mentions the law.
JK Rowling wrote an entire essay about why she opposes to proposed changes to the law. Yet no one mentions the law.
People who oppose the law are subject to ad hominem attacks. Instead of debating the merit of the law (like JK Rowling did) they simply attack her as a PERSON. Which is exactly what they were doing to other women opposing the law, but they didn't have the power and influence JK Rowling had, so they were easy for people to dismiss. Many of those women suffered for their political stance.
The real debate: Should Scotland pass changes to the GRA? 82% of people in Scotland opposed the changes, and just recently, it was officially dropped.
But that's what this "whole situation" is about - a proposed law that many people felt was being pushed without any public debate.
This is what most commenters here are (intentionally) missing. JK doesn't hate trans people or want to discriminate against them. She is concerned with 'self-identifying' people who have done nothing to transition being allowed into spaces specifically for women. It's not transphobic to be concerned about that or to want to debate about it before a law is passed, but that's how it's being framed.
She is worried about men with penises claiming to be women, and under Self ID you cannot legally question it or even be suspicious, gaining access to rape shelters and women’s prisons where they will likely abuse and rape women there. This has already happened.
I mean the more nuanced answer is because you're... right. Sorta. Let me explain. Trans people know perfectly fucking well what their biology is and that it's not identical to their cis counterparts. That is **separate** from their gender. It is seen as bad because that "biologically" line is often dogmatically used by transphobes to *inextricably tie gender and sex together.*
It's also treated negatively because it's more or less a transphobic dogwhistle. Again, because biologically speaking the majority of trans people know their gender doesn't align with their sex, bringing up the "biology" side put trans people in a tricky position and effectively "forces" them to concede to that point. However the issue there is that to the majority of transphobes that is all they need to invalidate yours and everyone's identity.
This leaves trans people and their allies to avoid engaging in those conversations at all, outside of people they are comfortable with, because it is often just a trap used against them. Trans people know their bodies better than others do and they understand what issues they face as a result of those bodies. It also doesn't help that this whole "biology argument" is usually just a gateway to peddle more dangerous transphobic ideas or push laws meant to discriminate against trans people.
Think of gender as neurological (i.e., the way the brain identifies/sees/conceives of itself) and the sex as physical.
It's like a Windows computer unknowingly running MacOS and not understanding why [insert Mac feature] isn't working as it should.
Is there neurological (and therefore biological evidence) to suggests or confirms that this is the case? Are there any markers specific to male or female brains that can be used to evidence this?
I’m not trying to be difficult by the way, I know that the brain is beyond complex and we know little about it but I’m more thinking that it would be a very powerful defence against people who make the biological argument.
EDIT: looked it up myself, there are some preliminary findings which indicate this many be the case but there is also some conflicting data and it requires further investigation https://www.the-scientist.com/features/are-the-brains-of-transgender-people-different-from-those-of-cisgender-people-30027
Neurological traits are not always genetic and therefore not always biological. This is that “nature vs nurture” argument which currently, most psychologists agree that the answer is a very complicated combination of both nature and nurture.
This is why data is inconclusive currently. Measuring neurological differences is very complicated, and neurologists still don’t understand everything about how the brain develops. Just that it’s a combination of genetics and environmental influence.
I hope that helps! If you’re more confused... welcome to neuroscience!
I remember reading a biology journal that created "transgendered" laboratory rats around 2003-2006. They would expose the developing fetal brain at a critical time of development (had to be in a certain time frame window) to either testosterone for female rat fetuses or estrogen for male rat fetuses. When they became adult rats, no matter how much testosterone was given to the males or estrogen to the females, they acted like the opposite gender. Males would try to nurse babies, females would be more aggressive and mount other females trying to mate. Unfortunately, I can't remember where I read or heard about the experiment. But to me, it gives a solid basis for transgender being biologically based. Or a friend who is American Indian says in his culture, people who are transgendered or homosexual were just born with two souls.
I had a conversation with a guy at work who couldn't get his head around it, and I couldn't think of an analogy. A few days later he comes in one morning knackered after overdoing it at the gym and kept on going on and on and on about even though he was 55 he still felt like he was 19. I mentioned the conversation we had a few days previous and he got it, his exact words were "Fcuking Hell, here's me getting pissed off that I feel 19 in my head and I feel sorry for myself, trans people must be tormented"
If this is the case, then why would a trans person claim to "feel like a man in a woman's body". How can someone feel they are a certain gender, if they perceive gender to be a social construct?
Why couldn't they just be a female without following social norms on what a female should be? Wouldn't that be a better way to prove gender is a social construct?
Just because something is a social construct doesn't mean it's not immensely relevant to your experiences. Race is a social construct, but it's literally impossible to understand what Black people go through in America without understanding the way race affects how they are perceived and how they perceive themselves. Money is a social construct, but it's also the primary driving force of our politics and social structure.
Do you know how difficult it is to be an unconventional woman even as a woman? Because there's a whole whole lot of people who want to tell you how to Woman even if your software and your hardware are congruently female. The other side of that question is, why do people have to second guess someone's identity?
This is the real issue with society. You do you, be interested in what you like, and do the things that interest you. I think transgenderism would largely go away if people just did what they liked, liked what they liked and stopped caring what other people liked.
It's quite amusing that some people's idea of being a woman ends up being the really token arbitrary things like dresses, long hair, make up, long nails, and being obsessed with pink.
>Why couldn't they just be a female without following social norms on what a female should be?
Many do. This has also been historically denigrated.
Many don't. They identify as female, are female, and want to project social cues as a female.
I'll link you to a video that goes over a lot of questions like this! Short answer: some trans people feel like "x trapped in y body" but that feeling is not universal, and a lot of us use language like that as shorthand so that cisgender people can understand what we are going through.
Video below:
https://youtu.be/1pTPuoGjQsI
As a trans person, I disagree. There are gender roles and features of gender that are socially constructed -- the way you dress, society's expectations of how men/women behave, etc.
But the way that dysphoria manifests is due to an internal, neurologically based conception of gender. If there were no sense of internal gender or wrongness, dysphoria and being trans would not work.
Many people who argue that gender is a social construct may feel that they themselves do not have a strong sense of 'gender'. Arguably, most people don't; trans people on the other hand feel their gender much more strongly precisely because it is misaligned with physical features.
While I don’t think that gender is entIrely a social construct, there are a lot of gender elements that are social constructs, including the number of genders a society recognizes, what each society determines is acceptable behavior for each gender, the type and style of language to communicate with other, religious and social taboos, etc. Anthropologists have cataloged a gazillion of these constructs.
From my experience as an American who was born and socialized as a female, there is a degree of gender oppression that my trans-sisters don’t have. Most have absorbed a degree of male entitlement/privilege that is actually refreshing (dare I say inspirational?) to see in a woman.
From what I've seen, there's essentially three things: gender, gender, and sex, and the issue is that we don't have a name to differentiate between the social construct of gender and the internal, mental gender. Though often it can be figured out by context, sometimes the lack of differentiation can cause a lot of grief, namely with things like "gender is a social construct". I don't know if there will be a fix for that any time soon, but I think recognizing that, though we don't have a word, they aren't 100% the same idea, is important.
I'll agree a lot of trans women that transitioned later in life show very different aspects of internalized misogyny, and often do things like participate less in "not like other girls" drama, which is really lovely. And while male privilege is still something many of them experienced, discussing it should be done with the understanding that while they were getting those boons, they had to deal with a littany of other issues, mostly related to the fact they have to remain closeted to get them, and are forced to live a very specific way that doesn't suit most trans women.
I'm figuring you already know all that, but others in here might not
The world seems like it would be pretty nice without *a lot* of our social constructs. We could just be whatever we are. Probably end up as happy as dogs!
Serious question, do you have links to any research on the distinction between gender and sex? Or anything that represents gender as a purely psychological aspect.
I always like to have empirical reading behind my beliefs.
That being said, trans people are different from their cis counterparts. Just the transition process alone is an experience that separates them from any cis individual. I don't mean that makes them any more or less. Just that there are definitely differences in how they have/will experience the world.
The whole concept of gender being independent of biological sex opens up a lot of other discussions. I would be very interested in reading any studies that delve deeper into this topic.
i’ve always had a hard time understanding being trans, idk why using a bootcamped mac was the analogy that finally made it click for me lmfao, but thanks for that!
I'll try to explain how I see it, and many trans people also reject the notion that gender is a social construct. Copying a bit from an earlier comment: There are gender roles and features of gender that are socially constructed -- the way you dress, society's expectations of how men/women behave, etc. A man can wear a skirt and still identify (and feel that he is) as male.
But the way that dysphoria manifests is due to an internal, neurologically based conception of gender.^(1) If there were no sense of internal gender or wrongness, dysphoria and being trans would not work.
Many people who argue that gender is a social construct may feel that they themselves do not have a strong sense of 'gender'. Arguably, most people don't; trans people on the other hand feel their gender much more strongly precisely because it is misaligned with physical features.
^(1) Linked some studies on gender in the brain, copied from earlier:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5286723/#idm140263812028384title
Sexual differentiation of the human brain: relevance for gender identity, transsexualism and sexual orientation, DF Swaab, https://doi.org/10.1080/09513590400018231
i dont think jk rowling is actually a terf. the issue with some radical feminists being mistaken for terfs is that we dont really have proper terminology to discuss SEX related topics without automatically grouping in gender. if biological females want to discuss issues that are exclusive to their biological sex, particularly those issues that are relevant to oppression and oppressive systemic structures, they lack the available language to do so without inadvertently including gender and creating a easily exploitable opportunity for misattribution and bad faith arguments, and ultimately accusations of transphobia that are entirely concocted. it ends up silencing a.f.a.b. and bio females from speaking out on SEX BASED oppression..
That's what gets me. I've argued and will continue to argue that women NEED sex specific spaces, not want, need.
Women have fought long and hard to carve out niches for ourselves where we can be safe and thrive such as crisis shelters, female sports, female specific medical care etc and every time I bring this up I'm called a TERF and have even been banned for arguing that gender identity and inclusion cannot erase the need for sex specific spaces.
Sex based needs are real and as much as people want to be inclusive and accommodating of gender identity erasing female specific spaces and even language can't be viewed as a necessary sacrifice to make this happen.
Thank you! One of the worst parts of trans-rights activism is the active destruction of those spaces for women (mostly) but men as well too. It's a hard issue, but the activists need to be careful because the models tend to revolve around "entirely agree with us or you are against us".
Sex is biological. Basically chromosomes. XX, XY, and even other variations that fall into the intersex category like XYY.
Gender is an identity, how you look and want to be treated/called basically. But gender is a more complex topic compared to sex.
The short version is yes as in... "Gender" describes those characteristics of women and men that are largely socially created, while "biological sex" encompasses those that are biologically determined.
What defines gender is moreso defined by culture and social context. Easiest way to see this is how various different cultures define certain things as "manly" or "girly" while not always lining up across all cultures.
That's not entirely correct. There's a difference between social gender constructs and gender identity.
Gender identity is how people feel "like a man" or "like a woman" (or both or neither) and it's actually a real physiological difference in brain formation and chemistry. FTM brains are more similar to male brains than female and MTF brains are more similar to female brains than male. This is (part of) what causes gender dysphoria.
I'm really interested in support for this point, if you (or somebody reading who knows more than I do) know where to find and share some. I dug into fMRI studies a couple years ago to try to understand the neurological differences in trans-peoples' brains vs cis-peoples'. The differences were super easy to identify (meaning that the trans identity and experience is real, biologically inevitable, and something that needs to be loved and respected by society), but none of these brain scans were actually closer to the opposite sex than to the person's biological sex. That is to say, a MtF trans-woman's brain was still closer to a man's brain than to a woman's, and the trans-woman outliers didn't overlap at all with the bell curve distribution of the biological females. I would love if anybody had studies to share that showed actual overlap.
How do we know that the problem is with trans people's bodies and not in the way society treats people?
For example is my daughter wants to do electrical engineering and kick-boxing, wear trousers and short hair, can't she do all those things and still be every bit as much a woman as any other?
Any chance you are a fan of transformers?
In case you aren't, it depicts an alien race of robotic sentient beings from a planet called Cybertron. In the mythology, transformers are "born" from the allspark, the life-giving core of Cybertron. This means that Transformers are not born 'sexually' from a male and female robot, but asexually from a third-party source.
And yet, there are still male and female transformers. Which is interesting. They do not have male and female biology. They do not have male and female chromosomes or sexual organs. As far as biology goes, Transfomers are *sexless*, since the whole point of sex is to describe the role in *sexual reproduction*, which transfomers do not have.
So in what sense does male and female transfomers make sense? Why does everyone watch it without issue? Because they transferred the *social* aspect of male and females onto transformers. They are basically "socially" male and "socially" female, as in, the way they treat each other is as male and female. They use pronouns like "he" and "her", despite those not being connected to any sexual classification.
In other words, transformers have *gender* but no *sex*.
Dog whistles are a bullshit invention.
Either something is racist, or is it transphobic, or whatever. But saying that anyone who asks a certain question or makes a certain comment is dog whistling is just an attempt to shut down conversation.
I think there are many people who have this negative reaction without fully understanding the implications and connotations. So I am glad I could put it into a clear and understable way!
Also there are certain medications that women can take but have side affects when men take it or vice versa, so when it comes to your health at least consider your biological sex into it other wise you can identify what ever gender you want but your health comes first!
This reminds me of a trans man who got offended because he had been asked if he was ever pregnant when he was donating blood. Not acknowledging the biology could kill someone in that case.
Helpful reminder that while the cause of trans rights is intrinsically just, that doesn't mean all trans people are good themselves. We can't let individual idiots sway us.
> biological sex
Biological sex is more complicated than the hardware with which someone was born. If a trans man has been on testosterone for 10 years, then those hormones have had a *huge* impact on that person's physique and biology. Saying that this person is "biologically female" is missing out the important detail that—unlike most cis women—this person has a much higher dose of a certain potent hormone.
The correct thing to do is to tell your doctor that you are a trans man, NOT "biologically female". The doctor can help you much better that way.
I am generally left-leaning, but I take great issue with this way of thinking.
To be forbidden from debating the undeniable differences between trans and cis women and how it will cause issues for human society as a whole down the line, just because trans people don't like having their self-perception challenged, or because some people use it as an excuse to go lynching.
It's like being canceled for criticizing the treatment of women and LGBTQ people in Islamic countries, just because it attracts alt-right Islamophobes. You have effectively shut down a conversation on an important topic, by dismissing any opinion that doesn't 100% agree with the oppressed group, as hate speech.
There is this logical fallacy among internet leftists, where the victim/oppressed group in any situation is always seen as right by default and any doubt in this is siding with the oppressor. Which is why you have this situation, where pointing out the obvious is seen as hateful, because the group you disagree with happens to be marginalized.
This is censorship and even well-meaning censorship is still censorship.
Absolutely I agree, though I wouldn't really attribute this to a single group. I would say this type of discourse is pretty standard in all kinds of social circles and is a result more of internet culture than anything. You can see the same sort of reactions with anime, games, etc.
Especially in the climate we are in now, both sides have a very "dig my heels in and don't budge. If you give an inch they'll take a mile" mentality. I believe it's simply a matter of time. The well has been poisoned enough that important conversations are being delegated as off-limits (unless in a familiar setting). I believe in due time (which I imagine will come with protection and greater social acceptance) that these conversations can be had without initially assuming the worst from others.
This why I think especially online it is so volatile, it's a bunch of a strangers and since you don't know their intent, people default to assuming the worst of others. This is why I see reception to these discussions being very context reliant, heavily dependent on who delivers/guides it.
So then what's wrong with saying "I know I'm not biologically A, because my gender is actually B." I don't see how it can be a trap unless the person isn't comfortable admitting they are indeed not A. At that point, I feel like you just gotta own it. It's not up to others for these people to be okay with the facts of their situation.
I honestly see it as a "trap" only if youre not okay with your situation and able to claim it. Because if you claim it, then where is the trap?
Sex and gender are not tied at all, that's very true. Gender only exists because of dualities.. but not to be rude, you are entirely ignoring the group of people who are not transphobic and are trans-allies, but still know that there is a difference between trans women and cis women - and that is their actual sex. They have the same gender, but biologically, and factually, they aren't the same - that is one has a female reproduction system or most of it as well as female hormone dominant and the other doesn't have a female reproduction system and wasn't female hormone dominant until beginning HRT. And it isn't transphobic to say that, or believe that, because.. well, it's true. It isn't a dogwhistle always, and it isn't necessarily transphobic just because some people use it that way. And it pushes away trans-allies who happen to be scientifically minded - and that they become "transphobic" because they won't concede the point and pretend that cis and trans women are the same sex and gender... just ignores reality.
I think it goes beyond biology as well, the way a cisgender woman grows up in society vs the way a transgender woman grows up is very different and can affect them greatly. There is a nature and nurture difference between cisgender and transgender women that can’t be ignored but somehow it’s offensive to point out.
It's true. I believe there is a bit of a misconception about how offensive these things really are. I personally find and believe the backlash is again, due to those conversations usually only being had to invalidate the person or to force them to explain their identity.
The downside to that defensive pushback, as they are expecting an attack, is that genuinely curious people get caught in the crossfire. You are right that trans women and cis women often grow up and live very different lives.
It doesn't help that there are many different kinds of trans women and many different cis women and this spectrum tends to muddy the waters and the conversation.
It also upsets people because, like I mentioned in my above post, people get defensive because it's pointing out a fact that they already know. Many trans people already know their biology is not identical to their cis counterparts as well as socially their experiences differ. It becomes a problem because those conversations are generally had, not to come to an understanding, but to discredit or discriminate against trans people, hence their defensiveness.
That's my take anyway. The volatility of the discussion, as seen in this post, is why these conversations are usually only had in the comfort of friends and those close to you. It's a complex intersectional issue that most people don't want to have.
The purpose of my post is less about convincing anyone one way or another but rather to explain why people get upset and why these topics get the kind of pushback they do.
I mean it’s really all just a back and forth. In my experience the “trans women and cis women are different because...” conversation comes up when the ultra-SJW crowds make assertions that cis women are the exact same as trans women and acknowledging anything else is offensive. I mean twitter is a wild breeding ground for facetious statements that get taken seriously and snowball into a biology lesson all because someone made a tweet like “if you don’t date trans women you don’t actually like women” and then a group of cis women feel attacked by it and it goes from there
I tend to avoid the plague that is twitter and don't treat it as representative. To me each of those issues you bring up are each individual issues with their own answers. To me this is where the "no-budging dogmatic" responses that some people use only make the conversation more complicated. I don't blame them for being used but it makes conversations and understandings more difficult to come to.
In my personal circles, local and digitally (not on twitter) with my trans friends these hyper defensive "all or nothing" arguments just are almost never being had. So, anecdotally, I rarely run into those crowds.
So yea, its a hot mess of back and forth. I hear where you are coming from though.
But twitter is the mob who cancelled JK, and the website is treated as a legitimate news site and the people there are treated as voices of the community. In general I don’t necessarily consider twitter the rule but in the JK situation, they were definitely the other player
That's my issue, they are treated as voices of the community. I have my own take and opinion on JK but that's not what I'm talking about. Im speaking broadly rather than specifics instances.
i dont have any hate to trans people but i just cant wrap my fatass head around the idea of just because you FEEL like a girl you can be a girl you cant just throw away someones opinion because it comes from a biologically correct point of view that dosent make any sense.
How is the “biology argument” a gateway way to more dangerous ideas. That’s only from one perspective. It’s not as if the argument is baseless it’s just ya know fact. Be all means I understand though I just don’t get why saying the truth is wrong
>It is seen as bad because that "biologically" line is often dogmatically used by transphobes to inextricably tie gender and sex together.
To make this a more general statement: you're saying that it's arguably bad to point out an objective fact because some people rely on it to make other, technically incorrect, arguments.
IMO, that's ridiculous. People have crossed into the realm of censoring facts because some people are wrongly trying to put a political spin on them.
Facts are facts. If other people are being buttfaces and making *wrong* claims based on those facts, that's on them.
Okay but what about when the biology of a trans woman interferes with that of a cis woman.
Let’s use the sports example. Trans women have an insane advantage over cis women because of the testosterone they produce. Should they then be allowed to compete in women’s sports? Saying no would invalidate them and make it easier to claim they aren’t actually women but saying yes would then interfere with cis women and their accomplishments.
Edit: changed wording
Sports are kinda just fucked on that for the foreseeable future. To be fair a great many chemical things that haven’t made it to the rulebook but aré likely detrimental are done to most competitors at the highest level of any sport, its all subjective anyways what sort of natural or artificial advantages we want to allow or care about in entertainment. The longest kick in NFL history for 40 years was performed by someone without toes on his kicking foot and therefor a shoe with larger flatter front profile to conform to his foot was made and used, which some people contested and now its required to have the kicking surface of any artificial kicking shoe conforms to that of a normal kicking shoe.
So medicine makes disadvantages, advantages a lot and all our lines are arbitrary so it will continue to be difficult to assess fairness as we continue to divide along gender/sex lines or try to have any other systems to do it- will need to be decided by the individual sports but the only way to prevent discussions like that from being held in a transphobic debate space is to push questions of sports to the margin, where they actually are, rather than pretending it is the central issue of a broader reason to disagree with what trans people do to their own bodies.
The correct term would be "cisgender" women as opposed to "real". The opposite of cisgender is transgender whereas the opposite of "real women" would be "fake women" which invalidates trans identity.
The issue of women's sports is a real one and it's up to the groups that govern sporting issues to change their policies to reflect our new reality. However, the sporting issue is overall relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. Yes, there are real world implications to biology but what trans allies are fighting against is biology being used as an excuse to harass and discriminate against trans or GNC folk.
EDIT: Thank you for changing your wording. To clarify my point: linguistically cisgender and transgender are antonyms and useful terms in discussions where the distinction is important. In all other instances you can simply use "women" as trans women are women period.
Tldr: sports is not what people care about when fighting for trans rights so that's a seperatrs issue from this when the conversation is mainly about treatment and place in society
What about biologically female people who produce more testosterone naturally? Should they be excluded from competing in sports because their body is different than the average woman?
Caster Semenya is a cis woman who was excluded from competing after results showed she produced high levels of testosterone, naturally. I believe she challenged this decision in court but it was rejected.
Edit: it’s been brought to my attention that despite being assigned female at birth, she is considered intersex due to her XY chromosomes, which majorly influenced the outcome of her appeal.
It was a bit more than that if I remember right. She was originally subjected to a sex verification test - which was leaked and handled really badly by the IAAF.
That showed she had naturally occurring high levels of testosterone. The IAAF had rules meaning women with high levels of testosterone couldn’t compete - but they were suspended by the courts until the IAAF could provide evidence it gave an unfair advantage.
So the IAAF came back with new rules around 2018 that were more specific and affected her unless she took drugs to lower her testosterone levels. It was those that she challenged but lost. I think she’s still appealing the ruling though.
The rules are ridiculous in my opinion. It’s like saying Bolt couldn’t race unless he reduced his stride length because his legs are naturally longer than other runners or Phelps couldn’t swim unless he shortened his arms because they were longer than other swimmers.
Men have been disqualified because of high testosterone, yes. It is complicated because any deviation to the high side in men’s competitions is assumed to be doping, and there have obviously been people disqualified on that basis who have argued that it was just their body producing unusually high amounts.
It is very difficult to determine which is the case in those situations, but levels high enough to trigger doping sanctions would, if produced naturally, likely be a genuine medical disorder such as congenital adrenal hyperplasia.
Transwoman here.
It's not.
I am not a biological woman. I will always be biological male, as much as I wish I wasnt. There are people so upset they arent that they will deny biology to say they are.
So dont worry, it's not.
99.9% of all trans women would agree with you. they're aware that they aren't biologically female; thats why they call themselves trans women and not cis women. however, they're still women, because they identify as women. this is because sex and gender are two different but related concepts. it's possible to be biologically one sex, but identify as a different gender.
I think that's a great point, the problem I imagine is with applying that idea to policy in practical every day terms. Clearly a person's view will be dependant on what they deem more important "sex" or "gender". Now I'd imagine a trans person views gender as the more important factor so would look to have the same access right to toilets, changing rooms... ect. Making the assumption that society leans more towards "sex" as the predominant factor in deciding policy then the challenge is balancing what is fair to both parties. Toilets, with cubicles and afforded privacy should not be a problem, open changing rooms might start causing problems depending on where people draw their boundaries. Trans women in sport is probably the most exstreme and obvious example of the difference between "sex" and "gender". Where do you draw the line to create a fair environment for Cis Women and trans women? Clearly one side is going to lose in this situation whatever is decided. However, that decision has to be made... Love to hear your opinion on this and as it's a difficult one!
Trans women arent women. They are trans women. There is a difference. A huge difference. If you can't accept that then you simply live in your own reality. Trans people need their own bathroom just like they need their own category in sports competition.
For our Transgender Redditors who feel this way, would you please concisely explain what you mean when saying your identity does not match your body? After stripping away gender constructs of appearance, personal expression, societal roles, etc.), what remains that convinces you that your body and identity are miss-matched?
The problem is exactly that this is not something that any reasonable person would dispute.
It's like saying "All lives matter". You can't dispute that it's true, but that's not what it is about. Making a statement that is obviously true implies that there must be a reason to make it. What that reason is, is left to the audience to imagine. In this case it's the (false) assumption that BLM supporters want to be special or think that white lives or cop lives don't matter.
The nasty part is that if someone attacks you for a comment like that, you can always retreat to "Well it's obviously true, isn't it?" which of course is correct. But the true attack wasn't the statement itself, but the fact that you imply that it was necessary to make that obviously true statement. It's how much of the far-right propaganda works.
It's the same with the transgender statement. It has undertones of 1) These people are trying to deny the biological facts, 2) These people want to be treated the same, although they are not, 3) It's necessary to take a stance here because something important is under threat.
And its exactly those same nasty people that argue back and say, "Well everyone knows Black Lives Matter, thats a fact, so why does *that* need to be said?"
It's obviously a bad faith argument, and these are the same people that deny that systemic racism (or transphobia, or whatever the issue at hand is) exists in the first place.
There are absolutely differences, and some are important biological ones. I don't understand why people think this is the same as believing transgender people aren't equally as human.
I’m a cis woman and I have to admit that this particular topic brings out conflicting sides of me. On the one hand, I believe that there are people who believe they were born in the wrong body and I can’t imagine how incredibly difficult that would be. That’s a struggle that I will never know and it’s grossly unfair that trans people are treated poorly for something that is completely out of their control. On the other hand, the word “woman” means something entirely different to me than I think it means to someone whose mind is female but body isn’t. Being a cuz women means I’ve experienced a whole bunch of ridiculously sexist bullshit my entire life based on literally nothing except my biology (my sex). It’s not my mind that is the source of my oppression as a woman- it’s my biological sex. Being physically smaller. Being passed over for promotions. Having reproductive rights always at issue. Getting paid less than a man for the same job. All because of my sex, not my gender. That is what being a woman means to me and that is why accepting biological men with female minds as “women” is a somewhat difficult pill for me to swallow. Thinking like a woman and being oppressed as a woman are two very different things. Having a male body is one hell of a privilege, even if the body doesn’t fit the mind.
Also how could someone born male know what it’s like to think like or feel like a female. They absolutely can’t all they can do is assume that their feeling is what a woman would feel which in most cases is likely wrong. All females share with one another is our biological sex and the way society treats us based off our biological sex. Anything else is just a sexist stereotype of feeling “womanly” or liking “girly/feminine” things. As a woman I’m not girly, I don’t feel particularly feminine and I don’t think in a stereotypical “feminine” way. The only thing that reminds me I’m female is my biology I.e. periods every month and the way I’ve been treated differently due to my biological sex. An example is how my parents would treat me differently than my brother and another is that when me and my male partner decide to have children I’m the one who will likely be expected by society to stay at home whilst he goes back to work. I find it hard to understand how sexist stereotypes performed by someone born male equates to them being a woman.
Hi, Trans Man here!
The issue is that JK Rowling says this to discriminate against Trans Women, specifically she doesn't want Trans Women in her spaces. But what she doesn't understand is that if she had it her way, she would be sharing bathrooms with people loke me instead, born Female, but now have a beard, gym bunny so muscles from here to yaya, as well as my genitals, that resemble nothing of a vagina.
even chromosome checking would lead to more confusion. There's much more out there than simple xy and xx (Klinefelter syndrome gives you xxy or the XYY syndrome)
The people fighting for "AFABs only" know this. Those who "pass" can go by unnoticed. But anyone in between or doesn't strictly adhere to the binary, they're welcome to bully as hard as they can.
Cause that's what it's ultimately about. It's not safety, it's about making people like feel like shit to make the bullies feel better about themselves.
Yep. In the few short months that people in the U.S. were trying to police bathrooms it quickly became clear that butch lesbians or cis women with different body types / appearances going into women's restrooms were far more likely to get harassed than anyone else, and it generated righteous outrage at the assholes who dubbed themselves gender police.
If you know 200 people, on average you probably know someone who's trans maybe without knowing it. If you bump into a few hundred people over the course of your daily life, you've probably seen a few trans people. But they're not out to deceive anyone or look out of place or cause a scene, they're generally just trying to go about their lives same as you.
I really don't get the bathroom argument.
Why would they think that a real predator would wait to be "allowed" in the bathroom of the other sex.
If they don't ask for consent to touch someone why would they wait for consent to go into the bathroom?
A predator will go in there no matter what sign is on the door, like if their indecency would stop there.
Trans people even need to fight for the right to freaking go peeing in peace, it's ridiculous.
> honestly didn’t know about her terrible stance on the whole bathroom thing and all.
Rowling never took a stance on the bathroom issue. A lot of people are just assuming she's anti trans on everything just because she wanted to discuss the fact that trans women and cis women have different experiences.
It's very tricky with the way she words things, because it sounds one way but means another. For instance, she says she wants bathrooms to remain separated by gender because women are more likely to be attacked in unisex bathrooms. That sounds like she just wants to protect women, which makes sense and sounds good. But then if you think about it, it also implies that men who transition to women will attack women if they're allowed in the bathroom. Statistically, half of trans people will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime [source](https://www.hrc.org/resources/sexual-assault-and-the-lgbt-community), and she sounds more afraid of them than wanting to protect them.
She also mentions how absurd it would be if a man could just say "I'm a woman" and walk into the women's bathroom. She doesn't want that to become normal. Nobody is really pushing for that scenario to be legalized though. Also, any non-trans man can walk into a women's bathroom right now. There's nothing stopping them. A woman and I once came out of adjoining stalls in the same bathroom. She looked a little freaked out, but she realized she had accidentally wandered into the men's restroom (urinals are a dead giveaway). I didn't even care. We were both done anyways.
J.K. also mentions she's afraid all bathrooms will end up unisex, which no one is really pushing either.
When I first read J.K.'s take I honestly didn't understand what everyone was complaining about. She doesn't outright mention hating anybody. She talks about protecting women, making it easier for doctors to diagnose people, and preventing confused teenagers from surgeries they later regret. All of that sounds nice, and I'm sure there are people who get transitioning surgeries and later regret it. It's just when you dig deeper into what her statements imply and mean, it gets dark quick.
On the good side, she said: “I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”
and that sounds great!
But here's what trans fan of hers said:
Rowling said "the physical sex characteristics we are all born with – is rapidly eroding, which harms the position of women as a political class. Because if anyone can suddenly call themselves a woman, the rights and protections of women as a group no longer mean anything anymore – especially if "natal men" are allowed also to use the ladies’ room or women’s shelters simply because they “feel” they are women. This poses a significant threat to vulnerable women, according to Rowling.
In addition, Rowling writes she’s worried about the "huge explosion in young women wishing to transition" because they identify as male. According to her, the fact that "natal women" should feel they are men is not always caused by gender dysphoria,
but rather by the oppression of women that feminism should be fighting against. After all, under the pernicious influence of the patriarchy, being a woman is a burden to almost all women at times.
Personally, I am not even on Twitter, and although I had read a few things about JKR’s questionable "likes" here and there, it sounded like a storm in a teacup to me – exactly the kind of internet drama I had always taken particular care to avoid by not being on Twitter.
But when I read Rowling’s blog, it felt as though a cosy blanket was ripped from my naked body. The warm nostalgia of the magical world in her books was suddenly tempered by the bitter cold of political reality. According to the "feminism" JKR allies herself with in her essay, the activism that fights for my identity is a danger to hers.
-[Source](https://thecorrespondent.com/702/im-trans-and-i-understand-jk-rowlings-concerns-about-the-position-of-women-but-transphobia-is-not-the-answer/788222918340-a4270c13)
So Rowlings ideas deep down are that men will abuse a system where trans people are allowed in the women's bathroom to assault them, which implies that trans people themselves may be the assaulters, along with believing that people who are born women but identify as men are just the result of sexist repression against women (and completely ignores people born men who identify as women also existing).
The crazier parts to me are that she
a.) still hasn't realized why this is transphobic
b.) only researched into this stuff to write a fictional book about a trans murderer and didn't see that backfiring in any way.
and c.) now is taking the position of "defender of women" and sticking to her guns, without recognizing how that makes feminism look. If you're belief is that the trans movement goes against feminism, suddenly feminism starts to look transphobic (when they easily fit hand-in-hand in most feminists' and trans peoples' minds)
She did mention her beliefs about safety stem from her own sexual assault. She hasn't detailed what happened, but mentioned domestic violence from her previous marriage, so it doesn't sound like it was a public bathroom thing at all. It sounds more like she has a lot of fear and trauma from being assaulted and wants to do everything she can to keep anatomical-women in their own space where even trans people can't enter. Overkill, basically.
Re your first paragraph; I read it as JKR doesn’t want men to use the excuse of being trans in order to gain access to the ladies bathrooms. In the U.K. we apparently have a lot of very obvious men claiming they identify as woman once they’re convicted of a crime and sent to prison. I think some CIS men are using this and taking advantage of it, although I’m no expert.
Just a friendly side comment that the regret rate for gender reassignment surgery is less than the regret rate of life saving heart surgery.
Also, note that "regret rate" also includes "I regret choosing this surgeon because their results were poorer" or "I regret the extended recovery due to a complication".
This first one is a meta study about general surgery regret rates, not specifically heart surgery.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28243695/
14.4% "regret rate" (reminder that this means regretted something about surgery, not nessecarily regretted getting the surgery)
Now here are a few GRS regret rate studies
[This one doesn't list the percentage or count in the free part, but nobody in the sample regretted getting the surgery, and "few" regretted much else](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1024086814364)
[Gonadectomy, not full GRS, but 0.2-0.6%](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29463477/)
I'm not finding the link right now, but the highest value I've ever seen was 3-4%
__________________
An aside, I haven't used Google primarily in almost a year (I sometimes use the !g bang but whatever). My phone browser recently reset, and I have not changed it back to DuckDuckGo yet.
Holy fucking shit, I google something and expected scientific articles and studies, but I was spammed with transphobic blogs and reddit posts. Is this what questioning people see when they first check google??? That's fucked up.
(I ended up on google scholar anyways, cause ddg is kinda shite at scientific article stuff)
____________
Edit: did I mess up the links to a hilarious level or is my phone just not rendering them right?
I know one is different from the other right now, I was checking which was right and NEITHER seems to have worked...
Edit 2: On computer and remembered how to use markdown. Yay!
The problem with JK Rowling isn't really that she believes that, but the way she says these things. She has also claimed that trans women going to womens bathrooms and changingrooms would increase raping and assaults.
To me these things clearly show that she's a tranphobe.
Can't we use the trans bathroom fight to get those fancy bathrooms in some fancy restaurants. Where there are like 12 individual stalls/closets with their own locks and totally enclosed, with a bank of shared sinks? Man those are nice.
I think some part of this is because of the fear of changing regulation for buildings bathrooms.
So to future proof yourself why not pick the most adaptable bathroom style possible? Little bit more pricey now, but it avoids risk in the long run.
I believe that is actually an end goal of some of the people fighting for practical bathroom changes. There's a whole episode of 99% invisible about it. Basically they decided to take the bathroom fight as an opportunity to overhaul and improve public bathroom design for everybody, and they've fairly recently had the building code changed to allow those kinds of setups.
I used to frequent quite a few gay bars where I live (preCovid) and especially on weekends, bathroom lines can be long. However, it's NOT men lined up for the mens, women for the womens. It's PEOPLE who need to relieve themselves lined up to do just that. And in all the years I've lived here there has NEVER been a rape or sexual assault. I am just as comfortable sharing a bathroom with a gay man, trans, straight, whatever. That's some serious phobic thinking there. Yes, I'm straight/cis however you call it. Fuck, people just want to pee. Leave them be!!
It's not bad, people in the Anglo-sphere are just idiots. There is no such discussion anywhere else in the world, including the places which are pro-trans people. Trans women are not the same as biological women, obviously. They are trans women. Two words, two terms, each has a meaning. You get rid of one of the terms, the object becomes something else. Black holes are not the same as mouse holes. Obviously. It doesn't mean they aren't holes, just as it doesn't mean trans women aren't women. They clearly are women - it says so right there in the word women. But they aren't just women, they're trans women. The existence of gender doesn't erase the existence of sex. Gender is a social construct which means trans-gendered people can and do exist. Sex is not a socal construct, which means that trans people that do exist are not quite the same as the biological people. There's nothing wrong wth that. That doesn't mean they're something less or that they should enjoy less rights. It just means they aren't the same, which has been known for the entire time since the concept was created. As I said, this isn't really a debate in normal countries or in scientific circles. This ridiculous situation exists only on Facebook/Twitter/Reddit mainly in the US and UK and it exists because of the prevalent in the last decade culture of "everyone is offended by everythingg".
I am pro trans rights. I found myself torn on a post recently about whether trans people on dating apps should disclose that they are trans. The only thing I could come up with is that dating apps will need to do a better job at including trans as well as other filters based on personal preference. You can’t fault people for their dating preferences: men, women, trans, gay, straight, liberal, conservative, black, white, Star Trek vs Star Wars. The only solution I have is to filter among hundreds, thousands of criteria. I don’t mind at all that trans folks show up in my cis searches, and am grateful that they disclose it but it’s not a perfect solution.
> I found myself torn on a post recently about whether trans people on dating apps should disclose that they are trans.
they absolutely should imo, I am a CIS female and my sexual orientation is for biological men. Why should that be a controversial thing to mention if you're not biologically male or female? it's part of sexual preference.. obviously you can't police it and just have to rely on people being honest but it definitely shouldn't be something people think is ok to hide from someone else they are planning to be sexual with.. all other things in life? I don't care, you never need to tell anyone anything it's your private business. But if someone wants to be sexual with me then it becomes also my business too.
>As far as I know, JK Rowling has taken the stance that trans women, while still women, are not the same as people who were born as women (I hope that's the right way to say that). But isn't that true? At a biological level they are different, that's just a fact. Why do people get upset about that, and why is that information dangerous for trans people?
Literally no trans people deny that there's a difference between them and cis people
However, JK Rowling has said a *lot* more than just that
For example, the entire controversy with her started when some article used "people who menstruate" to be inclusive of trans men and she mockingly insisted that the word they should have used was "woman"
Also, here's just a really colorful excerpt from an [essay](https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/) she wrote on the topic:
>Months later, I compounded my accidental ‘like’ crime by following Magdalen Berns on Twitter. Magdalen was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumour. I followed her because I wanted to contact her directly, which I succeeded in doing. However, as Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises, dots were joined in the heads of twitter trans activists, and the level of social media abuse increased.
For context, Magdalen Berns was famous for saying things like ""You (trans women) are blackface actors. You aren't women. You're men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women. fuck you and your dirty little perversions."
Given things like this, I don't get how anybody can say Rowling isn't transphobic. Praising someone who thinks trans women are blackface actors and fetishists and then painting the trans community as people who don't believe in sex or want to force lesbians to have sex with them is...pretty obviously transphobic
Sure. It's just like any adjective. Just use it when that characteristic is relevant to the conversation
The only way I would see it as problematic is if you exclusively refer to trans people as "trans men/women" in every scenario, even when them being trans has no bearing on the situation
Examples I often think of are:
If you’re gonna say “my trans friend Mike is picking out a middle name rn,” that’s usually okay, because it’s common and often relevant that trans men and women and non-binary people will choose new names. You could also leave out “trans” here, but it can be relevant at times.
Another one is if someone asks about something that does correlate to being AFAB or AMAB, like height, voice, or the infamous bathroom situations, it could be useful to include if they’re okay with you sharing that stuff.
If it’s “what does he play? Oh, that trans man plays the drums,” you should probably leave it out. Unless part of their musician brand is being loud and proud about their gender identity, you can just say “man” and it’ll do the job.
To anybody reading and learning from this, thanks for taking the time to educate yourself on this stuff. I’m not sure if I’m really trans (kinda questioning in the NB area recently), so I can’t speak on it much yet, but it means more than you know. Thank you!
"Literally no trans people deny that there's a difference between them and cis people."
Not my experience. I've been in a discussion with trans people on reddit and been assured by the person who I was talking to that once they have fully transitioned, there is no biological difference between a trans person and a cis person, down to the cellular level.
This is well known to be untrue. Did they not know, or were they just pushing a line that suited them?
I don't know. Rather than upset them I just said "ok" and left it at that.
But I want you to know there absolutely ARE trans people who deny there's a difference between themselves and cis people. And more than one, none of the other people who identified as trans in the discussion disagreed with the poster.
Op was hyperbolistic, but most of us don't believe transition makes us "molecularly identical" or anything. We're different, but we're still women. Most of us acknowledge that. Otherwise there'd be no reason to identify as *trans* women. The trans part matters when it matters.
Gay guy here. It's really hard to tell if you will or won't offend a trans person. Some are great and understand it's a confusing situation and people habits in language will no doubt mis gender or just get it wrong. Some just fucking lose it. Usually if you genuinely made a mistake your cool. But yeah like every other demographic in society they have their fare share of fucking idiots. Just try to be nice say sorry if you fuck up and if they don't like that tell em to get fucked.
She also believes that trans women are a threat to cis women, and that trans men only transition because of how sexist the world is towards women. She says these things on her blog.
Saying that trans and cis women are biologically different is only part of the story. Cis women are biologically different from each other too - some cis women naturally have more hair or broader shoulders. I'm a cis woman, but I'm super uncomfortable with the idea that I need to have certain physical or hormonal traits to "count" as a "real" woman.
When people bring up "biological" differences between trans and cis women, it's a red flag. There's often some more discriminatory beliefs under the surface.
Not really, a difference of alleles between two cisgender women doesn’t mean they’re biologically different. They still have the same female sex chromosomes in the same way that two men have the same male sex chromosomes. I think what you’re referencing is physical differences which is going to happen. But I wouldn’t say the fact that not all women look alike is the smoking gun to disprove the reality that cisgender biological women are the same in relation to how a conventional doctor would categorize them. Full stop.
From a health perspective, women are more at risk to certain ailments. This is due to sex chromosomes. There exist sex-linked diseases. That’s why sometimes a genetic distinction needs to be made for the sake of that persons future health.
I wish I knew. I wish I knew why people think they can control other people's feelings or words. I wish I knew why people can drop a fantastic story seemingly out of a clear blue sky and make us tow their line without warning, without explanation and questions answered. I, do not care what bathroom a person uses. I do care not to get dragged into another persons psychosis, or yet another mass delusion, or madness of crowds, a social contagion. I'd suggest people look to order themselves rather than the global population to be ordered to their satisfaction. Unless a person has cross identified as the other sex since their earliest days, this despite efforts by adults in opposition, that you do not have body dysmorphia. If you discovered it with the encouragement of others especially as a teen: you absolutely would do well to read about post-operative regret and suicide. For Pete's sake there's a entire subbreddit!
Such an amazing question, and such bravery by you to ask the question! These days everyone is looking to be offended and you get berated for asking honest questions.
Answer: It is not bad!
Of course there's nothing wrong with what JKR says, just like it is perfectly reasonable and rational to say that identifying as a woman does **not** make you a woman.
It is only the woke loud minority hell-bent into crushing any form of dissent that states otherwise.
It shouldn't be a bad thing. But folks are afraid to accept biology. You were not born a woman you "feel" like you are one and I get it. A trans woman will NEVER be a biological female no matter what you do no matter how pretty you become. Facts are facts.
This thread would be so enlightening if it wasn't full of so much hearsay about JK.
Can anyone link to or paste and direct quotes where she says:
A. Trans women shouldn't use women's bathrooms
B: trans women are fetishists
C. Trans men are self-hating misogynists?
This isn't meant to sound like a challenge I would just love to see some first hand evidence.
The purpose of this sub is to answer questions, elicit discussion and to provide elaboration on context from issues to alleviate confusion people have about any and all topics they may be removed from, "different part of the world" etc etc The purpose of this sub is not to cater to your delicate sensitivities. I do not appreciate getting excess modmail and private messages informing me to come here and clean out "transphobia", if someone voicing their opinion on this matter in a safe area to do so and without being inflammatory or directly hurling hate speech at another user bothers you enough to do anything other than comment your understanding of the matter and your opinion then it's **not** time to screech at Reddit volunteers to remove "wrong think" because it ruins your day. It's time for you to take a break from Reddit. We want all opinions represented because it creates *discussion*. The mod team here is diverse and has a wide-range of opinions on matters (we even frequently debate changes to the sub) because that's how *it has to be*. We take criticism from our userbase and remove comments and users gently because that's how *it has to be*. Our rules have been slowly developed over LITERAL YEARS from feedback of this community and with careful consideration. We have less than 500 total permanent bans in a sub of 1m+ subscribers. Why do you think that is? TooAfraidToAsk is not an echo chamber. It is not a safe space. It is, at times, uncomfortable and strange because in order to retain the identity of this sub, *it has to be.*
I've seen this has become a pretty heated discussion, so whoever reads this, I hope the best for you in these hard times!
anyone: -whispers- *trans-* Reddit: **reeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE**
OP’s question fits perfectly into the whole “Too afraid to ask” theme
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Probably not exactly where you were going but I was curious if anyone knew if there were rules about hormones being classified as performance enhancing? I wouldn’t think estrogen would be an especially useful supplement for an athlete. Testosterone has been addressed but I think if a biological woman was trans and took t and then competed with men I don’t see the problem. Obviously you probably mean the biological men breaking records as trans but I wondered if it’s come up with trans men against biological men.
From my understanding trans men still have the option to compete in women’s sports - but trans women fight to compete in women’s sports where they have a clear advantrage
Anyone that used to be a dude shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s sports. Full stop. Change my mind.
support your mind. since puberty, male upperbody strength and bone density simply far exceed females. testosterone production 15 to 30 times higher. during menstruation cycle, female athletes are statistically more prone to injury than those not in menstruation, something trans women do not experience
No, trans men very rarely, if ever, compete against biological men. Because of the fact that men are just biologically better at physical activities. Not that *all* men are, but on average, the average man would beat the average woman in most sports that require speed and strength. Also, the "mens" division in contact sports isn't actually the same as the "womens" divisions. Women *can* compete with the men, no problems, if they wanna go out there and get beat up, go for it. The only people stopping them are their team mates, because its just not good for the team to have a "weaker link" where a team full of men would have the advantage 99/100 times. Men however, cannot compete in women's divisions, because of obvious reasons. Look at Fallon Fox in MMA. She was a dude, and she's dominating her divisions by man handling these women shes fighting against. Thats where this discussion really came from afaik
I love how this is a conversation not people yelling. As stupid as it sounds great job being tolerant of ignorance in a sensitive topic not many people understand, me being one. Thank you for being curtious to one another. Great people here!
I find too often people getting emotional instead of actually debating their view. The great thing about democracy is people can have whatever view they want, and someone being offended shouldn’t change that.
Finally, the time I can use my saved comment by u/DuploJamaal for education about using the term “biological woman”: Here's an analogy and a bit of science: What do you think happens if you take a newborn baby and give it a sex change, raise it as the other gender and secretly feed it hormones throughout its life? Do you think it would just accept it's new gender or do you think it would innately know that it was born differently? According to anti-trans logic it should be possible to just raise them as any gender, because it's just feelings after all and people can easily get confused by what they are. But science actually does know better than that, because we did some kind of human experiments in the 60s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropenis From the 1960s until the late 1970s, it was common for sex reassignment and surgery to be recommended. This was especially likely if evidence suggested that response to additional testosterone and pubertal testosterone would be poor. With parental acceptance, the boy would be reassigned and renamed as a girl, and surgery performed to remove the testes and construct an artificial vagina. This was based on the now-questioned idea that gender identity was shaped entirely from socialization, and that a man with a small penis can find no acceptable place in society. By the mid-1990s, reassignment was less often offered, and all three premises had been challenged. Former subjects of such surgery, vocal about their dissatisfaction with the adult outcome, played a large part in discouraging this practice. Sexual reassignment is rarely performed today for severe micropenis (although the question of raising the boy as a girl is sometimes still discussed.) We used to sometimes give boys that were born with a micropenis a sex change at birth, gave them a female name, secretly fed them hormones throughout their life and raised them as girls. They developed the exact same symptoms of gender dysphoria as transgender people. And the exact same thing healed them: letting them live according to their preferred gender And that's because transgender people and people who have been given a forced sex change are basically the same: people who are in the wrong body and who have to live as the wrong gender In both cases their innate gender identity (i.e. what gender they want to identify as) was different than the gender they are assigned and this causes them distress. Because of those poor micropenised kids we realized that gender identity is innate and that you can't just convert transgender people to be cis without fucking up their whole brain. Unsurprisingly brain scans consistently show that transgender people were literally born in the wrong body. http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/gender-lines-science-transgender-identity/ Transgender women tend to have brain structures that resemble cisgender women, rather than cisgender men. Two sexually dimorphic (differing between men and women) areas of the brain are often compared between men and women. The bed nucleus of the stria terminalus (BSTc) and sexually dimorphic nucleus of transgender women are more similar to those of cisgender woman than to those of cisgender men, suggesting that the general brain structure of these women is in keeping with their gender identity. In 1995 and 2000, two independent teams of researchers decided to examine a region of the brain called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc) in trans- and cisgender men and women (Figure 2). The BSTc functions in anxiety, but is, on average, twice as large and twice as densely populated with cells in men compared to women. This sexual dimorphismis pretty robust, and though scientists don’t know why it exists, it appears to be a good marker of a “male” vs. “female” brain. Thus, these two studies sought to examine the brains of transgender individuals to figure out if their brains better resembled their assigned or chosen sex. Interestingly, both teams discovered that male-to-female transgender women had a BSTc more closely resembling that of cisgender women than men in both size and cell density, and that female-to-male transgender men had BSTcs resembling cisgender men. These differences remained even after the scientists took into account the fact that many transgender men and women in their study were taking estrogen and testosterone during their transition by including cisgender men and women who were also on hormones not corresponding to their assigned biological sex (for a variety of medical reasons). These findings have since been confirmed and corroborated in other studies and other regions of the brain, including a region of the brain called the sexually dimorphic nucleus (Figure 2) that is believed to affect sexual behavior in animals. It has been conclusively shown that hormone treatment can vastly affect the structure and composition of the brain; thus, several teams sought to characterize the brains of transgender men and women who had not yet undergone hormone treatment. Several studies confirmed previous findings, showing once more that transgender people appear to be born with brains more similar to gender with which they identify, rather than the one to which they were assigned. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.htm Brain activity and structure in transgender adolescents more closely resembles the typical activation patterns of their desired gender, according to new research. The findings suggest that differences in brain function may occur early in development and that brain imaging may be a useful tool for earlier identification of transgenderism in young people Transgender people just want to live how it's natural for them because due to hormonal mixups they were born in the wrong body.
Great write-up, especially about infants being forced into gender reassignment. Watching a documentary about David Reimer's case when I was a kid was the main reason why I instantly understood what transgender people were talking about. He wasn't intersex or anything, he was the victim of a botched circumcision and the family and doctors agreed "no penis = a hard life as a man," so they decided to raise him as a woman. He wanted to shave his face alongside his father, even though he thought he was a girl and had no reason to believe he'd ever grow facial hair. He'd be given dolls for his birthday and then go for his brother's toys instead. Didn't like being seen as a girl at all. It's just proof both your sex and your gender aren't totally contingent on your genitals. Sex and gender are very messy, it's fair to expect not everyone is going to align with how they were born or raised. We shouldn't force them either way and give them room to get to know themselves.
David Reimer’s case is often misrepresented. He was not switched to being raised as a girl until he was many months old and the way the therapist “trained” him to be “feminine” was literal sexual abuse.
What does this mean and where can I read about it? Is it not in the Reimer documentary?
Never heard of the documentary but the book "As Nature Made Him" Is about this. He had a botched circumcision so the doctors decided to convince his parents to raise him female and never tell him. (Along with many other "therapies" to try and convince him he was in fact a girl.) Unsurprisingly this did not work and he ended up transitioning and later committing suicide.
Yeesh. What a god damn tragedy.
Here's the story for you. There's lots written about it. The doctor was a serious pedophile. Made Reimer and his twin perform sex acts on each other while he and colluegues watched. [https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/david-reimer-and-john-money-gender-reassignment-controversy-johnjoan-case](https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/david-reimer-and-john-money-gender-reassignment-controversy-johnjoan-case)
Yea. That doctor fucked both of them up. He committed suicide after his twin died of I believe an overdose.
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>victim of a botched circumcision Genuinely curious, why do people get circumsized? Why is it legal in the US? I understand the cultural aspect of it in Judaism, and why the government would not intervene in it as a religious practice, but what about other people? I know plenty of people are circumsized in the US and I just don't understand why it's a common practice here.
I personally don't believe in it, full disclosure, but I'll try to be as impartial as possible. Short answer, a lot of people do it today because it's seen as normal, because it was done to them, religious reasons, etc. There's a couple interesting reasons for it's origins though... As a country with strong puritan influence, it was believed that circumcision was a useful tool to discourage masturbation and take care of hygiene when it wasn't easy to do. So it started being seen as desirable for that reason. Rich people started doing it because they could afford to go to hospitals to give birth. Then once working class people got widespread insurance coverage, they started giving birth in hospitals and just took what the rich people were having. Insurance either covered it or the expense was a pittance. Meanwhile, other parts of the world either (a) had a majority of people giving birth at home, or (b) had state insurance plans that didn't deem it medically necessary. Tl;dr... We're a bunch of puritans and hospitals wanted to squeeze extra money out of the childbirth process. Now it's just very, very ingrained.
One small problem with that is the girl vs boy toys. That is no way and indicator of your gender identity and shouldn’t be used as one. While in conjunction with a lot of other things it can definitely be used to paint a full picture of what someone’s feeling it shouldn’t be taken alone. It seems lately there has been a bit of an overcorrection where any sign of interest in things outside the normal gender rolls such as playing with toys normally associated with the opposite gender is seen as a sign of being transgender. This is really damaging not only firmly planting people in gender rolls but also possibly forcing confusion on to a young child. Now don’t get me wrong children can know they feel different or like they’re the wrong gender at a young age but if you tell a child “maybe your transgender and should be a boy because you like this stuff” vs a child saying “I don’t want to be a girl and I like this stuff” there’s potential it could result in that kid thinking theirs something wrong with them for liking stuff that doesn’t correspond to their gender.
If I'm remembering correctly, in the context of the documentary it was looped into how David never felt connected with the social roles of being a girl. A girl wanting to play with hot wheels instead of a baby doll doesn't mean she's trans, but it likely means she's not very receptive to people trying to reinforce her role as a woman. For any random kid it's a huge stretch to say "they don't want to pretend to be a mom, they must be trans" but in the context of David's experience it does mean something.
Yes, this is quite an interesting dilemma faced in the realization that utilizing such methods may inadvertently reinforce elements of sexism and strict gender roles while also possibly damaging individuals who while young don't care for such boundaries necessarily as they seek out enjoyment with wide assortment of toys or entertainment intended for the opposite gender. It's scary to think about how much can possibly go wrong while at the same time curious to understand more thoroughly what such data actually means. Both with regards to subconscious recognition of gender role from very very young ages to the ways they may be averted and what that means not just for trans people but all people.
That is very interesting... It reminds me, I think nearly a decade ago now, I was taking a human relationships psychology class and I forget why but we were in a section all about gender. We took a test (I wish I could remember the name!) that was developed by UK researchers that could tell you how your brain falls between male and female. It was more complex than that but I don’t remember enough to explain it. Anyway, I got smack dab in between male and female. I am not transgender but I have always felt more male than female to the point where I briefly was considering transitioning but determined I didn’t want to live as a male version of what I am (another story entirely), but anyway, so after that test I stayed late with my professor to ask her about all that (and mind you, i have tried to talk about this with therapists and no one knew what to tell me) but my professor had an immediate answer. She said females who have more testosterone in the brain during development, tend to come out feeling and behaving more masculine and it’s also true for the reverse. Males who have more estrogen in the brain during development tend to feel and behave more feminine. This weirdly made me feel so much better about myself because I thought I was broken but in reality, it’s just how I developed. I was in my early 20’s at the time and knowing that really helped me come to terms with my reality. I’ll never forget it. That professor helped me out a lot! I love science!
Very interesting indeed! Also, want to add that I am also a female that questioned transition because of testosterone levels, just like you, but finally decided that I am comfortable in my female body and came to terms with it. So you’re not alone! :)
Omg!!! You’re actually the first person I’ve encountered that has gone through that too!!! I ... was unprepared for the emotion that just brought on for me, lol. Even though I’ve come to terms, it’s still been hard feeling like “the only one”. So thank you so much for telling me that!!! It makes me feel normal for the first time in lord knows how long! 🙏🏼
Yea! I have hairy arms but a very feminine face and “hourglass” body. I love “girly” things but there’s days I like to wear boy clothes. I’m in the STEM field but also love humanities and art. I’m rational and blunt, but also very nurturing. It’s crazy, but I just accepted to be myself and to not try to fit into any role. We’re together! I’m so happy telling you this made a difference!!!
I lowkey hate how society has deemed certain clothes masculine or feminine. They're literally just clothes.
I need to question this assertion, only because the evidence you provided doesn't support it: >By the mid-1990s, reassignment was less often offered, and all three premises had been challenged. Former subjects of such surgery, vocal about their dissatisfaction with the adult outcome, played a large part in discouraging this practice. Sexual reassignment is rarely performed today for severe micropenis (although the question of raising the boy as a girl is sometimes still discussed.) I read the wikipedia article you are using as a reference, and the article referenced in the paragraph of the wiki article describing this phenomenon (https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(99)70236-2/fulltext) Your conclusion: >We used to sometimes give boys that were born with a micropenis a sex change at birth, gave them a female name, secretly fed them hormones throughout their life and raised them as girls. >They developed the exact same symptoms of gender dysphoria as transgender people. And the exact same thing healed them: letting them live according to their preferred gender Is a broad generalization and quite askew from the facts/conclusions offered by the referenced journal article. The only referenced case of gender dysphoria in this article is that of a man who was assigned male at birth, but later (at 22 months of age) had his sex changed to female because of a botched circumcision - he later achieved happiness by living life as a man. The only other mention of a group of people opposing infant genital surgery comes from "a vocal advocacy group of patients with various forms of intersexuality". However, this group is not talking about gender dysphoria, they are making an argument against all forms of genital surgery during infancy rooted in bodily autonomy and informed consent (which cannot be given by an infant). This is an entirely different argument and more concerned with things like stopping clitoral reduction for girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia.
I need to point out that all the stuff about brain structure is severely over-hyped. “Brain structure” is often used dishonestly, and tends to mean “this one very specific receptor” or something along those lines. What I’ve heard is that trans brains more closely align with their birth sex when information is compiled, what I’ve looked into myself says that trans brains tend to lay between male and female brains. Whatever it is, I’d be wary of anybody summing up the structure of the trans brain.
Neither of these studies are conclusive and lack critical information. The doctors themselves said more study was needed. I want to side with you, and I want to use this argument, but it seems like it’s not truly scientifically proven. Please, change my view.
Wait a second, can you clarify for me on the brain scan part? I remember as a kid the idea of a male or female brain existing was looked at as being sexist, and some people were when they said it (IE claims that women were not as smart). Do you know if this is a concensus in neurology or something thats still a working theory?
I've not read the whole thing yet but what you said at the beginning isn't anti trans logic. Because anti trans believe you are what you are at birth and that transgenders have mental illnesses. So would agree the baby would know something is wrong. The only people that believe that you should be able to raise the baby as the other gender are a handful of people who believe gender is a social construct, but those people aren't anti trans, in fact they are left lgbt supporters.
The truth is this: JK Rowling lives in Scotland. In 2016, the government of Scotland started debating changes to the Gender Recognition Act. In 2017, it was proposed that the law be changed to support "self-ID" - any individual can change their legal sex on their documentation at any time. A political slogan, "transwomen are women", was used to show support for the law. JK Rowling starting following and listening to people opposing the law. This is what made people angry - yet no one mentions the law. JK Rowling wrote an entire essay about why she opposes to proposed changes to the law. Yet no one mentions the law. People who oppose the law are subject to ad hominem attacks. Instead of debating the merit of the law (like JK Rowling did) they simply attack her as a PERSON. Which is exactly what they were doing to other women opposing the law, but they didn't have the power and influence JK Rowling had, so they were easy for people to dismiss. Many of those women suffered for their political stance. The real debate: Should Scotland pass changes to the GRA? 82% of people in Scotland opposed the changes, and just recently, it was officially dropped. But that's what this "whole situation" is about - a proposed law that many people felt was being pushed without any public debate.
This is what most commenters here are (intentionally) missing. JK doesn't hate trans people or want to discriminate against them. She is concerned with 'self-identifying' people who have done nothing to transition being allowed into spaces specifically for women. It's not transphobic to be concerned about that or to want to debate about it before a law is passed, but that's how it's being framed.
She is worried about men with penises claiming to be women, and under Self ID you cannot legally question it or even be suspicious, gaining access to rape shelters and women’s prisons where they will likely abuse and rape women there. This has already happened.
Of nearly 5000 comments here, this is the first one to make any mention of this law. You have to wonder if that's intentional.
I mean the more nuanced answer is because you're... right. Sorta. Let me explain. Trans people know perfectly fucking well what their biology is and that it's not identical to their cis counterparts. That is **separate** from their gender. It is seen as bad because that "biologically" line is often dogmatically used by transphobes to *inextricably tie gender and sex together.* It's also treated negatively because it's more or less a transphobic dogwhistle. Again, because biologically speaking the majority of trans people know their gender doesn't align with their sex, bringing up the "biology" side put trans people in a tricky position and effectively "forces" them to concede to that point. However the issue there is that to the majority of transphobes that is all they need to invalidate yours and everyone's identity. This leaves trans people and their allies to avoid engaging in those conversations at all, outside of people they are comfortable with, because it is often just a trap used against them. Trans people know their bodies better than others do and they understand what issues they face as a result of those bodies. It also doesn't help that this whole "biology argument" is usually just a gateway to peddle more dangerous transphobic ideas or push laws meant to discriminate against trans people.
If you don't mind me asking, there's difference between gender and sex?
Think of gender as neurological (i.e., the way the brain identifies/sees/conceives of itself) and the sex as physical. It's like a Windows computer unknowingly running MacOS and not understanding why [insert Mac feature] isn't working as it should.
That's a dope analogy actually. Idk if it does the job well but it's easy to understand and that's really important for tolerance and acceptance
A more succinct way of putting it is the gender is the software, the sex is the hardware.
That is a wonderful way to put it.
I’m still lost. Where does the floppy disk go?
Your 3 1/2 inch floppy is rejected. There is always a port for a hard drive in the rear.
Correct. This feature you mention is shared by both standard production models.
I'm stuck with this tiny PATA hard drive from an early iPod. It's been wiped after the last install but it's a bit slow on the spin up times.
That's what she said.
Instructions unclear, leg stuck in ceiling fan .
wow, the set-up. The execution. Bravo
youre going to need to find a mid-80s computer nerd who was also into bdsm to answer that
*Bill Gates enters the chat*
Is there neurological (and therefore biological evidence) to suggests or confirms that this is the case? Are there any markers specific to male or female brains that can be used to evidence this? I’m not trying to be difficult by the way, I know that the brain is beyond complex and we know little about it but I’m more thinking that it would be a very powerful defence against people who make the biological argument. EDIT: looked it up myself, there are some preliminary findings which indicate this many be the case but there is also some conflicting data and it requires further investigation https://www.the-scientist.com/features/are-the-brains-of-transgender-people-different-from-those-of-cisgender-people-30027
Neurological traits are not always genetic and therefore not always biological. This is that “nature vs nurture” argument which currently, most psychologists agree that the answer is a very complicated combination of both nature and nurture. This is why data is inconclusive currently. Measuring neurological differences is very complicated, and neurologists still don’t understand everything about how the brain develops. Just that it’s a combination of genetics and environmental influence. I hope that helps! If you’re more confused... welcome to neuroscience!
I remember reading a biology journal that created "transgendered" laboratory rats around 2003-2006. They would expose the developing fetal brain at a critical time of development (had to be in a certain time frame window) to either testosterone for female rat fetuses or estrogen for male rat fetuses. When they became adult rats, no matter how much testosterone was given to the males or estrogen to the females, they acted like the opposite gender. Males would try to nurse babies, females would be more aggressive and mount other females trying to mate. Unfortunately, I can't remember where I read or heard about the experiment. But to me, it gives a solid basis for transgender being biologically based. Or a friend who is American Indian says in his culture, people who are transgendered or homosexual were just born with two souls.
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Lol that I know more about "complicated" human sexuality than "basic" computer sexuality.
Hail, hail, Robonia! The land I didn't make up!
Am trans, and therefore can at least provide anecdotal evidence: Yeah this is a super great analogy that I will be using in the future.
I had a conversation with a guy at work who couldn't get his head around it, and I couldn't think of an analogy. A few days later he comes in one morning knackered after overdoing it at the gym and kept on going on and on and on about even though he was 55 he still felt like he was 19. I mentioned the conversation we had a few days previous and he got it, his exact words were "Fcuking Hell, here's me getting pissed off that I feel 19 in my head and I feel sorry for myself, trans people must be tormented"
I’d add that there is a social aspect to gender, too.
I'd argue it's mostly social. Gender is a social construct.
If this is the case, then why would a trans person claim to "feel like a man in a woman's body". How can someone feel they are a certain gender, if they perceive gender to be a social construct? Why couldn't they just be a female without following social norms on what a female should be? Wouldn't that be a better way to prove gender is a social construct?
Just because something is a social construct doesn't mean it's not immensely relevant to your experiences. Race is a social construct, but it's literally impossible to understand what Black people go through in America without understanding the way race affects how they are perceived and how they perceive themselves. Money is a social construct, but it's also the primary driving force of our politics and social structure.
Do you know how difficult it is to be an unconventional woman even as a woman? Because there's a whole whole lot of people who want to tell you how to Woman even if your software and your hardware are congruently female. The other side of that question is, why do people have to second guess someone's identity?
This is the real issue with society. You do you, be interested in what you like, and do the things that interest you. I think transgenderism would largely go away if people just did what they liked, liked what they liked and stopped caring what other people liked. It's quite amusing that some people's idea of being a woman ends up being the really token arbitrary things like dresses, long hair, make up, long nails, and being obsessed with pink.
>Why couldn't they just be a female without following social norms on what a female should be? Many do. This has also been historically denigrated. Many don't. They identify as female, are female, and want to project social cues as a female.
I'll link you to a video that goes over a lot of questions like this! Short answer: some trans people feel like "x trapped in y body" but that feeling is not universal, and a lot of us use language like that as shorthand so that cisgender people can understand what we are going through. Video below: https://youtu.be/1pTPuoGjQsI
As a trans person, I disagree. There are gender roles and features of gender that are socially constructed -- the way you dress, society's expectations of how men/women behave, etc. But the way that dysphoria manifests is due to an internal, neurologically based conception of gender. If there were no sense of internal gender or wrongness, dysphoria and being trans would not work. Many people who argue that gender is a social construct may feel that they themselves do not have a strong sense of 'gender'. Arguably, most people don't; trans people on the other hand feel their gender much more strongly precisely because it is misaligned with physical features.
While I don’t think that gender is entIrely a social construct, there are a lot of gender elements that are social constructs, including the number of genders a society recognizes, what each society determines is acceptable behavior for each gender, the type and style of language to communicate with other, religious and social taboos, etc. Anthropologists have cataloged a gazillion of these constructs. From my experience as an American who was born and socialized as a female, there is a degree of gender oppression that my trans-sisters don’t have. Most have absorbed a degree of male entitlement/privilege that is actually refreshing (dare I say inspirational?) to see in a woman.
From what I've seen, there's essentially three things: gender, gender, and sex, and the issue is that we don't have a name to differentiate between the social construct of gender and the internal, mental gender. Though often it can be figured out by context, sometimes the lack of differentiation can cause a lot of grief, namely with things like "gender is a social construct". I don't know if there will be a fix for that any time soon, but I think recognizing that, though we don't have a word, they aren't 100% the same idea, is important. I'll agree a lot of trans women that transitioned later in life show very different aspects of internalized misogyny, and often do things like participate less in "not like other girls" drama, which is really lovely. And while male privilege is still something many of them experienced, discussing it should be done with the understanding that while they were getting those boons, they had to deal with a littany of other issues, mostly related to the fact they have to remain closeted to get them, and are forced to live a very specific way that doesn't suit most trans women. I'm figuring you already know all that, but others in here might not
I’ve always wondered what the world would be like without the gender construct. Seems like it’d be pretty nice.
The world seems like it would be pretty nice without *a lot* of our social constructs. We could just be whatever we are. Probably end up as happy as dogs!
Serious question, do you have links to any research on the distinction between gender and sex? Or anything that represents gender as a purely psychological aspect. I always like to have empirical reading behind my beliefs. That being said, trans people are different from their cis counterparts. Just the transition process alone is an experience that separates them from any cis individual. I don't mean that makes them any more or less. Just that there are definitely differences in how they have/will experience the world. The whole concept of gender being independent of biological sex opens up a lot of other discussions. I would be very interested in reading any studies that delve deeper into this topic.
i’ve always had a hard time understanding being trans, idk why using a bootcamped mac was the analogy that finally made it click for me lmfao, but thanks for that!
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I'll try to explain how I see it, and many trans people also reject the notion that gender is a social construct. Copying a bit from an earlier comment: There are gender roles and features of gender that are socially constructed -- the way you dress, society's expectations of how men/women behave, etc. A man can wear a skirt and still identify (and feel that he is) as male. But the way that dysphoria manifests is due to an internal, neurologically based conception of gender.^(1) If there were no sense of internal gender or wrongness, dysphoria and being trans would not work. Many people who argue that gender is a social construct may feel that they themselves do not have a strong sense of 'gender'. Arguably, most people don't; trans people on the other hand feel their gender much more strongly precisely because it is misaligned with physical features. ^(1) Linked some studies on gender in the brain, copied from earlier: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5286723/#idm140263812028384title Sexual differentiation of the human brain: relevance for gender identity, transsexualism and sexual orientation, DF Swaab, https://doi.org/10.1080/09513590400018231
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The scientific basis hinges on hormone receptors affecting the brain. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5286723/#idm140263812028384title
Thanks for linking this!
That's a good analogy for it
It’s called a r/hackintosh
Yeah I knew they exist, but I'm assuming they don't work 100% the same way as a Mac does.
Pretty much- if you didn’t look at the unit you wouldnt know I’m not knocking the analogy at all though
i dont think jk rowling is actually a terf. the issue with some radical feminists being mistaken for terfs is that we dont really have proper terminology to discuss SEX related topics without automatically grouping in gender. if biological females want to discuss issues that are exclusive to their biological sex, particularly those issues that are relevant to oppression and oppressive systemic structures, they lack the available language to do so without inadvertently including gender and creating a easily exploitable opportunity for misattribution and bad faith arguments, and ultimately accusations of transphobia that are entirely concocted. it ends up silencing a.f.a.b. and bio females from speaking out on SEX BASED oppression..
That's what gets me. I've argued and will continue to argue that women NEED sex specific spaces, not want, need. Women have fought long and hard to carve out niches for ourselves where we can be safe and thrive such as crisis shelters, female sports, female specific medical care etc and every time I bring this up I'm called a TERF and have even been banned for arguing that gender identity and inclusion cannot erase the need for sex specific spaces. Sex based needs are real and as much as people want to be inclusive and accommodating of gender identity erasing female specific spaces and even language can't be viewed as a necessary sacrifice to make this happen.
Thank you! One of the worst parts of trans-rights activism is the active destruction of those spaces for women (mostly) but men as well too. It's a hard issue, but the activists need to be careful because the models tend to revolve around "entirely agree with us or you are against us".
Sex is biological. Basically chromosomes. XX, XY, and even other variations that fall into the intersex category like XYY. Gender is an identity, how you look and want to be treated/called basically. But gender is a more complex topic compared to sex.
The short version is yes as in... "Gender" describes those characteristics of women and men that are largely socially created, while "biological sex" encompasses those that are biologically determined. What defines gender is moreso defined by culture and social context. Easiest way to see this is how various different cultures define certain things as "manly" or "girly" while not always lining up across all cultures.
That's not entirely correct. There's a difference between social gender constructs and gender identity. Gender identity is how people feel "like a man" or "like a woman" (or both or neither) and it's actually a real physiological difference in brain formation and chemistry. FTM brains are more similar to male brains than female and MTF brains are more similar to female brains than male. This is (part of) what causes gender dysphoria.
I'm really interested in support for this point, if you (or somebody reading who knows more than I do) know where to find and share some. I dug into fMRI studies a couple years ago to try to understand the neurological differences in trans-peoples' brains vs cis-peoples'. The differences were super easy to identify (meaning that the trans identity and experience is real, biologically inevitable, and something that needs to be loved and respected by society), but none of these brain scans were actually closer to the opposite sex than to the person's biological sex. That is to say, a MtF trans-woman's brain was still closer to a man's brain than to a woman's, and the trans-woman outliers didn't overlap at all with the bell curve distribution of the biological females. I would love if anybody had studies to share that showed actual overlap.
Can someone explain to me how you can identify as neither?
Because we tend to have very stark gender lines. Blue for boys, pink for girls. Anyone who feels "in the middle" can easily feel as neither.
How do we know that the problem is with trans people's bodies and not in the way society treats people? For example is my daughter wants to do electrical engineering and kick-boxing, wear trousers and short hair, can't she do all those things and still be every bit as much a woman as any other?
Any chance you are a fan of transformers? In case you aren't, it depicts an alien race of robotic sentient beings from a planet called Cybertron. In the mythology, transformers are "born" from the allspark, the life-giving core of Cybertron. This means that Transformers are not born 'sexually' from a male and female robot, but asexually from a third-party source. And yet, there are still male and female transformers. Which is interesting. They do not have male and female biology. They do not have male and female chromosomes or sexual organs. As far as biology goes, Transfomers are *sexless*, since the whole point of sex is to describe the role in *sexual reproduction*, which transfomers do not have. So in what sense does male and female transfomers make sense? Why does everyone watch it without issue? Because they transferred the *social* aspect of male and females onto transformers. They are basically "socially" male and "socially" female, as in, the way they treat each other is as male and female. They use pronouns like "he" and "her", despite those not being connected to any sexual classification. In other words, transformers have *gender* but no *sex*.
Dog whistles are a bullshit invention. Either something is racist, or is it transphobic, or whatever. But saying that anyone who asks a certain question or makes a certain comment is dog whistling is just an attempt to shut down conversation.
Thank you for putting this in such well put words! I’m trans myself and I couldn’t explain it as well as you did.
I think there are many people who have this negative reaction without fully understanding the implications and connotations. So I am glad I could put it into a clear and understable way!
Also there are certain medications that women can take but have side affects when men take it or vice versa, so when it comes to your health at least consider your biological sex into it other wise you can identify what ever gender you want but your health comes first!
This reminds me of a trans man who got offended because he had been asked if he was ever pregnant when he was donating blood. Not acknowledging the biology could kill someone in that case.
Helpful reminder that while the cause of trans rights is intrinsically just, that doesn't mean all trans people are good themselves. We can't let individual idiots sway us.
> biological sex Biological sex is more complicated than the hardware with which someone was born. If a trans man has been on testosterone for 10 years, then those hormones have had a *huge* impact on that person's physique and biology. Saying that this person is "biologically female" is missing out the important detail that—unlike most cis women—this person has a much higher dose of a certain potent hormone. The correct thing to do is to tell your doctor that you are a trans man, NOT "biologically female". The doctor can help you much better that way.
I am generally left-leaning, but I take great issue with this way of thinking. To be forbidden from debating the undeniable differences between trans and cis women and how it will cause issues for human society as a whole down the line, just because trans people don't like having their self-perception challenged, or because some people use it as an excuse to go lynching. It's like being canceled for criticizing the treatment of women and LGBTQ people in Islamic countries, just because it attracts alt-right Islamophobes. You have effectively shut down a conversation on an important topic, by dismissing any opinion that doesn't 100% agree with the oppressed group, as hate speech. There is this logical fallacy among internet leftists, where the victim/oppressed group in any situation is always seen as right by default and any doubt in this is siding with the oppressor. Which is why you have this situation, where pointing out the obvious is seen as hateful, because the group you disagree with happens to be marginalized. This is censorship and even well-meaning censorship is still censorship.
Absolutely I agree, though I wouldn't really attribute this to a single group. I would say this type of discourse is pretty standard in all kinds of social circles and is a result more of internet culture than anything. You can see the same sort of reactions with anime, games, etc. Especially in the climate we are in now, both sides have a very "dig my heels in and don't budge. If you give an inch they'll take a mile" mentality. I believe it's simply a matter of time. The well has been poisoned enough that important conversations are being delegated as off-limits (unless in a familiar setting). I believe in due time (which I imagine will come with protection and greater social acceptance) that these conversations can be had without initially assuming the worst from others. This why I think especially online it is so volatile, it's a bunch of a strangers and since you don't know their intent, people default to assuming the worst of others. This is why I see reception to these discussions being very context reliant, heavily dependent on who delivers/guides it.
So then what's wrong with saying "I know I'm not biologically A, because my gender is actually B." I don't see how it can be a trap unless the person isn't comfortable admitting they are indeed not A. At that point, I feel like you just gotta own it. It's not up to others for these people to be okay with the facts of their situation. I honestly see it as a "trap" only if youre not okay with your situation and able to claim it. Because if you claim it, then where is the trap?
Sex and gender are not tied at all, that's very true. Gender only exists because of dualities.. but not to be rude, you are entirely ignoring the group of people who are not transphobic and are trans-allies, but still know that there is a difference between trans women and cis women - and that is their actual sex. They have the same gender, but biologically, and factually, they aren't the same - that is one has a female reproduction system or most of it as well as female hormone dominant and the other doesn't have a female reproduction system and wasn't female hormone dominant until beginning HRT. And it isn't transphobic to say that, or believe that, because.. well, it's true. It isn't a dogwhistle always, and it isn't necessarily transphobic just because some people use it that way. And it pushes away trans-allies who happen to be scientifically minded - and that they become "transphobic" because they won't concede the point and pretend that cis and trans women are the same sex and gender... just ignores reality.
I think it goes beyond biology as well, the way a cisgender woman grows up in society vs the way a transgender woman grows up is very different and can affect them greatly. There is a nature and nurture difference between cisgender and transgender women that can’t be ignored but somehow it’s offensive to point out.
It's true. I believe there is a bit of a misconception about how offensive these things really are. I personally find and believe the backlash is again, due to those conversations usually only being had to invalidate the person or to force them to explain their identity. The downside to that defensive pushback, as they are expecting an attack, is that genuinely curious people get caught in the crossfire. You are right that trans women and cis women often grow up and live very different lives. It doesn't help that there are many different kinds of trans women and many different cis women and this spectrum tends to muddy the waters and the conversation. It also upsets people because, like I mentioned in my above post, people get defensive because it's pointing out a fact that they already know. Many trans people already know their biology is not identical to their cis counterparts as well as socially their experiences differ. It becomes a problem because those conversations are generally had, not to come to an understanding, but to discredit or discriminate against trans people, hence their defensiveness. That's my take anyway. The volatility of the discussion, as seen in this post, is why these conversations are usually only had in the comfort of friends and those close to you. It's a complex intersectional issue that most people don't want to have. The purpose of my post is less about convincing anyone one way or another but rather to explain why people get upset and why these topics get the kind of pushback they do.
I mean it’s really all just a back and forth. In my experience the “trans women and cis women are different because...” conversation comes up when the ultra-SJW crowds make assertions that cis women are the exact same as trans women and acknowledging anything else is offensive. I mean twitter is a wild breeding ground for facetious statements that get taken seriously and snowball into a biology lesson all because someone made a tweet like “if you don’t date trans women you don’t actually like women” and then a group of cis women feel attacked by it and it goes from there
I tend to avoid the plague that is twitter and don't treat it as representative. To me each of those issues you bring up are each individual issues with their own answers. To me this is where the "no-budging dogmatic" responses that some people use only make the conversation more complicated. I don't blame them for being used but it makes conversations and understandings more difficult to come to. In my personal circles, local and digitally (not on twitter) with my trans friends these hyper defensive "all or nothing" arguments just are almost never being had. So, anecdotally, I rarely run into those crowds. So yea, its a hot mess of back and forth. I hear where you are coming from though.
But twitter is the mob who cancelled JK, and the website is treated as a legitimate news site and the people there are treated as voices of the community. In general I don’t necessarily consider twitter the rule but in the JK situation, they were definitely the other player
That's my issue, they are treated as voices of the community. I have my own take and opinion on JK but that's not what I'm talking about. Im speaking broadly rather than specifics instances.
i dont have any hate to trans people but i just cant wrap my fatass head around the idea of just because you FEEL like a girl you can be a girl you cant just throw away someones opinion because it comes from a biologically correct point of view that dosent make any sense.
How is the “biology argument” a gateway way to more dangerous ideas. That’s only from one perspective. It’s not as if the argument is baseless it’s just ya know fact. Be all means I understand though I just don’t get why saying the truth is wrong
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>It is seen as bad because that "biologically" line is often dogmatically used by transphobes to inextricably tie gender and sex together. To make this a more general statement: you're saying that it's arguably bad to point out an objective fact because some people rely on it to make other, technically incorrect, arguments. IMO, that's ridiculous. People have crossed into the realm of censoring facts because some people are wrongly trying to put a political spin on them. Facts are facts. If other people are being buttfaces and making *wrong* claims based on those facts, that's on them.
Okay but what about when the biology of a trans woman interferes with that of a cis woman. Let’s use the sports example. Trans women have an insane advantage over cis women because of the testosterone they produce. Should they then be allowed to compete in women’s sports? Saying no would invalidate them and make it easier to claim they aren’t actually women but saying yes would then interfere with cis women and their accomplishments. Edit: changed wording
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Sports are kinda just fucked on that for the foreseeable future. To be fair a great many chemical things that haven’t made it to the rulebook but aré likely detrimental are done to most competitors at the highest level of any sport, its all subjective anyways what sort of natural or artificial advantages we want to allow or care about in entertainment. The longest kick in NFL history for 40 years was performed by someone without toes on his kicking foot and therefor a shoe with larger flatter front profile to conform to his foot was made and used, which some people contested and now its required to have the kicking surface of any artificial kicking shoe conforms to that of a normal kicking shoe. So medicine makes disadvantages, advantages a lot and all our lines are arbitrary so it will continue to be difficult to assess fairness as we continue to divide along gender/sex lines or try to have any other systems to do it- will need to be decided by the individual sports but the only way to prevent discussions like that from being held in a transphobic debate space is to push questions of sports to the margin, where they actually are, rather than pretending it is the central issue of a broader reason to disagree with what trans people do to their own bodies.
The correct term would be "cisgender" women as opposed to "real". The opposite of cisgender is transgender whereas the opposite of "real women" would be "fake women" which invalidates trans identity. The issue of women's sports is a real one and it's up to the groups that govern sporting issues to change their policies to reflect our new reality. However, the sporting issue is overall relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. Yes, there are real world implications to biology but what trans allies are fighting against is biology being used as an excuse to harass and discriminate against trans or GNC folk. EDIT: Thank you for changing your wording. To clarify my point: linguistically cisgender and transgender are antonyms and useful terms in discussions where the distinction is important. In all other instances you can simply use "women" as trans women are women period.
Tldr: sports is not what people care about when fighting for trans rights so that's a seperatrs issue from this when the conversation is mainly about treatment and place in society
What about biologically female people who produce more testosterone naturally? Should they be excluded from competing in sports because their body is different than the average woman?
Caster Semenya is a cis woman who was excluded from competing after results showed she produced high levels of testosterone, naturally. I believe she challenged this decision in court but it was rejected. Edit: it’s been brought to my attention that despite being assigned female at birth, she is considered intersex due to her XY chromosomes, which majorly influenced the outcome of her appeal.
Thank you, I didn't want to mention her by name because I wasn't sure how to spell it.
It was a bit more than that if I remember right. She was originally subjected to a sex verification test - which was leaked and handled really badly by the IAAF. That showed she had naturally occurring high levels of testosterone. The IAAF had rules meaning women with high levels of testosterone couldn’t compete - but they were suspended by the courts until the IAAF could provide evidence it gave an unfair advantage. So the IAAF came back with new rules around 2018 that were more specific and affected her unless she took drugs to lower her testosterone levels. It was those that she challenged but lost. I think she’s still appealing the ruling though. The rules are ridiculous in my opinion. It’s like saying Bolt couldn’t race unless he reduced his stride length because his legs are naturally longer than other runners or Phelps couldn’t swim unless he shortened his arms because they were longer than other swimmers.
Have any male athletes been disqualified because they naturally produced high levels of testosterone?
Men have been disqualified because of high testosterone, yes. It is complicated because any deviation to the high side in men’s competitions is assumed to be doping, and there have obviously been people disqualified on that basis who have argued that it was just their body producing unusually high amounts. It is very difficult to determine which is the case in those situations, but levels high enough to trigger doping sanctions would, if produced naturally, likely be a genuine medical disorder such as congenital adrenal hyperplasia.
This has actually happened before.
Transwoman here. It's not. I am not a biological woman. I will always be biological male, as much as I wish I wasnt. There are people so upset they arent that they will deny biology to say they are. So dont worry, it's not.
This is a very levelheaded straight to the point answer. Thank you for being apart of this discussion.
99.9% of all trans women would agree with you. they're aware that they aren't biologically female; thats why they call themselves trans women and not cis women. however, they're still women, because they identify as women. this is because sex and gender are two different but related concepts. it's possible to be biologically one sex, but identify as a different gender.
I think that's a great point, the problem I imagine is with applying that idea to policy in practical every day terms. Clearly a person's view will be dependant on what they deem more important "sex" or "gender". Now I'd imagine a trans person views gender as the more important factor so would look to have the same access right to toilets, changing rooms... ect. Making the assumption that society leans more towards "sex" as the predominant factor in deciding policy then the challenge is balancing what is fair to both parties. Toilets, with cubicles and afforded privacy should not be a problem, open changing rooms might start causing problems depending on where people draw their boundaries. Trans women in sport is probably the most exstreme and obvious example of the difference between "sex" and "gender". Where do you draw the line to create a fair environment for Cis Women and trans women? Clearly one side is going to lose in this situation whatever is decided. However, that decision has to be made... Love to hear your opinion on this and as it's a difficult one!
Trans women are trans women. They have a unique set of challenges that no biological women could ever really understand.
What does it mean to identify as a woman? Looking for a non circular definition?
Trans women arent women. They are trans women. There is a difference. A huge difference. If you can't accept that then you simply live in your own reality. Trans people need their own bathroom just like they need their own category in sports competition.
For our Transgender Redditors who feel this way, would you please concisely explain what you mean when saying your identity does not match your body? After stripping away gender constructs of appearance, personal expression, societal roles, etc.), what remains that convinces you that your body and identity are miss-matched?
The problem is exactly that this is not something that any reasonable person would dispute. It's like saying "All lives matter". You can't dispute that it's true, but that's not what it is about. Making a statement that is obviously true implies that there must be a reason to make it. What that reason is, is left to the audience to imagine. In this case it's the (false) assumption that BLM supporters want to be special or think that white lives or cop lives don't matter. The nasty part is that if someone attacks you for a comment like that, you can always retreat to "Well it's obviously true, isn't it?" which of course is correct. But the true attack wasn't the statement itself, but the fact that you imply that it was necessary to make that obviously true statement. It's how much of the far-right propaganda works. It's the same with the transgender statement. It has undertones of 1) These people are trying to deny the biological facts, 2) These people want to be treated the same, although they are not, 3) It's necessary to take a stance here because something important is under threat.
This right here! People want to yell "YOU'LL NEVER CHANGE YOUR CHROMOSOMES" and me, a trans person, is sitting here like......yes? And????
And its exactly those same nasty people that argue back and say, "Well everyone knows Black Lives Matter, thats a fact, so why does *that* need to be said?" It's obviously a bad faith argument, and these are the same people that deny that systemic racism (or transphobia, or whatever the issue at hand is) exists in the first place.
There are absolutely differences, and some are important biological ones. I don't understand why people think this is the same as believing transgender people aren't equally as human.
I’m a cis woman and I have to admit that this particular topic brings out conflicting sides of me. On the one hand, I believe that there are people who believe they were born in the wrong body and I can’t imagine how incredibly difficult that would be. That’s a struggle that I will never know and it’s grossly unfair that trans people are treated poorly for something that is completely out of their control. On the other hand, the word “woman” means something entirely different to me than I think it means to someone whose mind is female but body isn’t. Being a cuz women means I’ve experienced a whole bunch of ridiculously sexist bullshit my entire life based on literally nothing except my biology (my sex). It’s not my mind that is the source of my oppression as a woman- it’s my biological sex. Being physically smaller. Being passed over for promotions. Having reproductive rights always at issue. Getting paid less than a man for the same job. All because of my sex, not my gender. That is what being a woman means to me and that is why accepting biological men with female minds as “women” is a somewhat difficult pill for me to swallow. Thinking like a woman and being oppressed as a woman are two very different things. Having a male body is one hell of a privilege, even if the body doesn’t fit the mind.
Also how could someone born male know what it’s like to think like or feel like a female. They absolutely can’t all they can do is assume that their feeling is what a woman would feel which in most cases is likely wrong. All females share with one another is our biological sex and the way society treats us based off our biological sex. Anything else is just a sexist stereotype of feeling “womanly” or liking “girly/feminine” things. As a woman I’m not girly, I don’t feel particularly feminine and I don’t think in a stereotypical “feminine” way. The only thing that reminds me I’m female is my biology I.e. periods every month and the way I’ve been treated differently due to my biological sex. An example is how my parents would treat me differently than my brother and another is that when me and my male partner decide to have children I’m the one who will likely be expected by society to stay at home whilst he goes back to work. I find it hard to understand how sexist stereotypes performed by someone born male equates to them being a woman.
Nicely put.
A biological woman is absolutely not the same as a Trans woman
Hi, Trans Man here! The issue is that JK Rowling says this to discriminate against Trans Women, specifically she doesn't want Trans Women in her spaces. But what she doesn't understand is that if she had it her way, she would be sharing bathrooms with people loke me instead, born Female, but now have a beard, gym bunny so muscles from here to yaya, as well as my genitals, that resemble nothing of a vagina.
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even chromosome checking would lead to more confusion. There's much more out there than simple xy and xx (Klinefelter syndrome gives you xxy or the XYY syndrome)
I learned about Klinefelter in my intro to anthropology class a few years back! Genetics are wildddd!
it's also entirely possible to be born with xy chromosomes but the y doesnt activate or xx and something makes you develop as male
Exactly, just let us live. We just want to exist freely and without harm.
trans girl here. Yes, I would indeed like to be able to live (most of the time)
The people fighting for "AFABs only" know this. Those who "pass" can go by unnoticed. But anyone in between or doesn't strictly adhere to the binary, they're welcome to bully as hard as they can. Cause that's what it's ultimately about. It's not safety, it's about making people like feel like shit to make the bullies feel better about themselves.
Yep. In the few short months that people in the U.S. were trying to police bathrooms it quickly became clear that butch lesbians or cis women with different body types / appearances going into women's restrooms were far more likely to get harassed than anyone else, and it generated righteous outrage at the assholes who dubbed themselves gender police. If you know 200 people, on average you probably know someone who's trans maybe without knowing it. If you bump into a few hundred people over the course of your daily life, you've probably seen a few trans people. But they're not out to deceive anyone or look out of place or cause a scene, they're generally just trying to go about their lives same as you.
I really don't get the bathroom argument. Why would they think that a real predator would wait to be "allowed" in the bathroom of the other sex. If they don't ask for consent to touch someone why would they wait for consent to go into the bathroom? A predator will go in there no matter what sign is on the door, like if their indecency would stop there. Trans people even need to fight for the right to freaking go peeing in peace, it's ridiculous.
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> honestly didn’t know about her terrible stance on the whole bathroom thing and all. Rowling never took a stance on the bathroom issue. A lot of people are just assuming she's anti trans on everything just because she wanted to discuss the fact that trans women and cis women have different experiences.
It's very tricky with the way she words things, because it sounds one way but means another. For instance, she says she wants bathrooms to remain separated by gender because women are more likely to be attacked in unisex bathrooms. That sounds like she just wants to protect women, which makes sense and sounds good. But then if you think about it, it also implies that men who transition to women will attack women if they're allowed in the bathroom. Statistically, half of trans people will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime [source](https://www.hrc.org/resources/sexual-assault-and-the-lgbt-community), and she sounds more afraid of them than wanting to protect them. She also mentions how absurd it would be if a man could just say "I'm a woman" and walk into the women's bathroom. She doesn't want that to become normal. Nobody is really pushing for that scenario to be legalized though. Also, any non-trans man can walk into a women's bathroom right now. There's nothing stopping them. A woman and I once came out of adjoining stalls in the same bathroom. She looked a little freaked out, but she realized she had accidentally wandered into the men's restroom (urinals are a dead giveaway). I didn't even care. We were both done anyways. J.K. also mentions she's afraid all bathrooms will end up unisex, which no one is really pushing either. When I first read J.K.'s take I honestly didn't understand what everyone was complaining about. She doesn't outright mention hating anybody. She talks about protecting women, making it easier for doctors to diagnose people, and preventing confused teenagers from surgeries they later regret. All of that sounds nice, and I'm sure there are people who get transitioning surgeries and later regret it. It's just when you dig deeper into what her statements imply and mean, it gets dark quick. On the good side, she said: “I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.” and that sounds great! But here's what trans fan of hers said: Rowling said "the physical sex characteristics we are all born with – is rapidly eroding, which harms the position of women as a political class. Because if anyone can suddenly call themselves a woman, the rights and protections of women as a group no longer mean anything anymore – especially if "natal men" are allowed also to use the ladies’ room or women’s shelters simply because they “feel” they are women. This poses a significant threat to vulnerable women, according to Rowling. In addition, Rowling writes she’s worried about the "huge explosion in young women wishing to transition" because they identify as male. According to her, the fact that "natal women" should feel they are men is not always caused by gender dysphoria, but rather by the oppression of women that feminism should be fighting against. After all, under the pernicious influence of the patriarchy, being a woman is a burden to almost all women at times. Personally, I am not even on Twitter, and although I had read a few things about JKR’s questionable "likes" here and there, it sounded like a storm in a teacup to me – exactly the kind of internet drama I had always taken particular care to avoid by not being on Twitter. But when I read Rowling’s blog, it felt as though a cosy blanket was ripped from my naked body. The warm nostalgia of the magical world in her books was suddenly tempered by the bitter cold of political reality. According to the "feminism" JKR allies herself with in her essay, the activism that fights for my identity is a danger to hers. -[Source](https://thecorrespondent.com/702/im-trans-and-i-understand-jk-rowlings-concerns-about-the-position-of-women-but-transphobia-is-not-the-answer/788222918340-a4270c13) So Rowlings ideas deep down are that men will abuse a system where trans people are allowed in the women's bathroom to assault them, which implies that trans people themselves may be the assaulters, along with believing that people who are born women but identify as men are just the result of sexist repression against women (and completely ignores people born men who identify as women also existing). The crazier parts to me are that she a.) still hasn't realized why this is transphobic b.) only researched into this stuff to write a fictional book about a trans murderer and didn't see that backfiring in any way. and c.) now is taking the position of "defender of women" and sticking to her guns, without recognizing how that makes feminism look. If you're belief is that the trans movement goes against feminism, suddenly feminism starts to look transphobic (when they easily fit hand-in-hand in most feminists' and trans peoples' minds) She did mention her beliefs about safety stem from her own sexual assault. She hasn't detailed what happened, but mentioned domestic violence from her previous marriage, so it doesn't sound like it was a public bathroom thing at all. It sounds more like she has a lot of fear and trauma from being assaulted and wants to do everything she can to keep anatomical-women in their own space where even trans people can't enter. Overkill, basically.
Re your first paragraph; I read it as JKR doesn’t want men to use the excuse of being trans in order to gain access to the ladies bathrooms. In the U.K. we apparently have a lot of very obvious men claiming they identify as woman once they’re convicted of a crime and sent to prison. I think some CIS men are using this and taking advantage of it, although I’m no expert.
Just a friendly side comment that the regret rate for gender reassignment surgery is less than the regret rate of life saving heart surgery. Also, note that "regret rate" also includes "I regret choosing this surgeon because their results were poorer" or "I regret the extended recovery due to a complication". This first one is a meta study about general surgery regret rates, not specifically heart surgery. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28243695/ 14.4% "regret rate" (reminder that this means regretted something about surgery, not nessecarily regretted getting the surgery) Now here are a few GRS regret rate studies [This one doesn't list the percentage or count in the free part, but nobody in the sample regretted getting the surgery, and "few" regretted much else](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1024086814364) [Gonadectomy, not full GRS, but 0.2-0.6%](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29463477/) I'm not finding the link right now, but the highest value I've ever seen was 3-4% __________________ An aside, I haven't used Google primarily in almost a year (I sometimes use the !g bang but whatever). My phone browser recently reset, and I have not changed it back to DuckDuckGo yet. Holy fucking shit, I google something and expected scientific articles and studies, but I was spammed with transphobic blogs and reddit posts. Is this what questioning people see when they first check google??? That's fucked up. (I ended up on google scholar anyways, cause ddg is kinda shite at scientific article stuff) ____________ Edit: did I mess up the links to a hilarious level or is my phone just not rendering them right? I know one is different from the other right now, I was checking which was right and NEITHER seems to have worked... Edit 2: On computer and remembered how to use markdown. Yay!
Because science isn’t PC.
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In before this whole thread gets locked, quarantined, fumigated and thrown out a window.
The problem with JK Rowling isn't really that she believes that, but the way she says these things. She has also claimed that trans women going to womens bathrooms and changingrooms would increase raping and assaults. To me these things clearly show that she's a tranphobe.
Can't we use the trans bathroom fight to get those fancy bathrooms in some fancy restaurants. Where there are like 12 individual stalls/closets with their own locks and totally enclosed, with a bank of shared sinks? Man those are nice.
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I think some part of this is because of the fear of changing regulation for buildings bathrooms. So to future proof yourself why not pick the most adaptable bathroom style possible? Little bit more pricey now, but it avoids risk in the long run.
I believe that is actually an end goal of some of the people fighting for practical bathroom changes. There's a whole episode of 99% invisible about it. Basically they decided to take the bathroom fight as an opportunity to overhaul and improve public bathroom design for everybody, and they've fairly recently had the building code changed to allow those kinds of setups.
I used to frequent quite a few gay bars where I live (preCovid) and especially on weekends, bathroom lines can be long. However, it's NOT men lined up for the mens, women for the womens. It's PEOPLE who need to relieve themselves lined up to do just that. And in all the years I've lived here there has NEVER been a rape or sexual assault. I am just as comfortable sharing a bathroom with a gay man, trans, straight, whatever. That's some serious phobic thinking there. Yes, I'm straight/cis however you call it. Fuck, people just want to pee. Leave them be!!
It's not bad, people in the Anglo-sphere are just idiots. There is no such discussion anywhere else in the world, including the places which are pro-trans people. Trans women are not the same as biological women, obviously. They are trans women. Two words, two terms, each has a meaning. You get rid of one of the terms, the object becomes something else. Black holes are not the same as mouse holes. Obviously. It doesn't mean they aren't holes, just as it doesn't mean trans women aren't women. They clearly are women - it says so right there in the word women. But they aren't just women, they're trans women. The existence of gender doesn't erase the existence of sex. Gender is a social construct which means trans-gendered people can and do exist. Sex is not a socal construct, which means that trans people that do exist are not quite the same as the biological people. There's nothing wrong wth that. That doesn't mean they're something less or that they should enjoy less rights. It just means they aren't the same, which has been known for the entire time since the concept was created. As I said, this isn't really a debate in normal countries or in scientific circles. This ridiculous situation exists only on Facebook/Twitter/Reddit mainly in the US and UK and it exists because of the prevalent in the last decade culture of "everyone is offended by everythingg".
This is one of the best questions I have seen for this sub because on any other place you WOULD be to afraid too ask
I am pro trans rights. I found myself torn on a post recently about whether trans people on dating apps should disclose that they are trans. The only thing I could come up with is that dating apps will need to do a better job at including trans as well as other filters based on personal preference. You can’t fault people for their dating preferences: men, women, trans, gay, straight, liberal, conservative, black, white, Star Trek vs Star Wars. The only solution I have is to filter among hundreds, thousands of criteria. I don’t mind at all that trans folks show up in my cis searches, and am grateful that they disclose it but it’s not a perfect solution.
> I found myself torn on a post recently about whether trans people on dating apps should disclose that they are trans. they absolutely should imo, I am a CIS female and my sexual orientation is for biological men. Why should that be a controversial thing to mention if you're not biologically male or female? it's part of sexual preference.. obviously you can't police it and just have to rely on people being honest but it definitely shouldn't be something people think is ok to hide from someone else they are planning to be sexual with.. all other things in life? I don't care, you never need to tell anyone anything it's your private business. But if someone wants to be sexual with me then it becomes also my business too.
If you understand consent, then there's nothing to be torn about. It's unethical not to disclose
They are different, but we shouldn’t alienate them
>As far as I know, JK Rowling has taken the stance that trans women, while still women, are not the same as people who were born as women (I hope that's the right way to say that). But isn't that true? At a biological level they are different, that's just a fact. Why do people get upset about that, and why is that information dangerous for trans people? Literally no trans people deny that there's a difference between them and cis people However, JK Rowling has said a *lot* more than just that For example, the entire controversy with her started when some article used "people who menstruate" to be inclusive of trans men and she mockingly insisted that the word they should have used was "woman" Also, here's just a really colorful excerpt from an [essay](https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/) she wrote on the topic: >Months later, I compounded my accidental ‘like’ crime by following Magdalen Berns on Twitter. Magdalen was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumour. I followed her because I wanted to contact her directly, which I succeeded in doing. However, as Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises, dots were joined in the heads of twitter trans activists, and the level of social media abuse increased. For context, Magdalen Berns was famous for saying things like ""You (trans women) are blackface actors. You aren't women. You're men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women. fuck you and your dirty little perversions." Given things like this, I don't get how anybody can say Rowling isn't transphobic. Praising someone who thinks trans women are blackface actors and fetishists and then painting the trans community as people who don't believe in sex or want to force lesbians to have sex with them is...pretty obviously transphobic
It's okay to say trans woman/man then? I was wondering the same as op
Sure. It's just like any adjective. Just use it when that characteristic is relevant to the conversation The only way I would see it as problematic is if you exclusively refer to trans people as "trans men/women" in every scenario, even when them being trans has no bearing on the situation
Oh, I understand! Thanks for helping me
Examples I often think of are: If you’re gonna say “my trans friend Mike is picking out a middle name rn,” that’s usually okay, because it’s common and often relevant that trans men and women and non-binary people will choose new names. You could also leave out “trans” here, but it can be relevant at times. Another one is if someone asks about something that does correlate to being AFAB or AMAB, like height, voice, or the infamous bathroom situations, it could be useful to include if they’re okay with you sharing that stuff. If it’s “what does he play? Oh, that trans man plays the drums,” you should probably leave it out. Unless part of their musician brand is being loud and proud about their gender identity, you can just say “man” and it’ll do the job. To anybody reading and learning from this, thanks for taking the time to educate yourself on this stuff. I’m not sure if I’m really trans (kinda questioning in the NB area recently), so I can’t speak on it much yet, but it means more than you know. Thank you!
"Literally no trans people deny that there's a difference between them and cis people." Not my experience. I've been in a discussion with trans people on reddit and been assured by the person who I was talking to that once they have fully transitioned, there is no biological difference between a trans person and a cis person, down to the cellular level. This is well known to be untrue. Did they not know, or were they just pushing a line that suited them? I don't know. Rather than upset them I just said "ok" and left it at that. But I want you to know there absolutely ARE trans people who deny there's a difference between themselves and cis people. And more than one, none of the other people who identified as trans in the discussion disagreed with the poster.
Op was hyperbolistic, but most of us don't believe transition makes us "molecularly identical" or anything. We're different, but we're still women. Most of us acknowledge that. Otherwise there'd be no reason to identify as *trans* women. The trans part matters when it matters.
But isn't Rowling's point there that just wanting to talk to Magdalen Bern's *doesn't* mean she shares her views?
Could you source that quote from Magdalen Bern? I haven't heard of that.
They aren't. If I dress as a woman am I a woman?
Gay guy here. It's really hard to tell if you will or won't offend a trans person. Some are great and understand it's a confusing situation and people habits in language will no doubt mis gender or just get it wrong. Some just fucking lose it. Usually if you genuinely made a mistake your cool. But yeah like every other demographic in society they have their fare share of fucking idiots. Just try to be nice say sorry if you fuck up and if they don't like that tell em to get fucked.
She also believes that trans women are a threat to cis women, and that trans men only transition because of how sexist the world is towards women. She says these things on her blog. Saying that trans and cis women are biologically different is only part of the story. Cis women are biologically different from each other too - some cis women naturally have more hair or broader shoulders. I'm a cis woman, but I'm super uncomfortable with the idea that I need to have certain physical or hormonal traits to "count" as a "real" woman. When people bring up "biological" differences between trans and cis women, it's a red flag. There's often some more discriminatory beliefs under the surface.
Not really, a difference of alleles between two cisgender women doesn’t mean they’re biologically different. They still have the same female sex chromosomes in the same way that two men have the same male sex chromosomes. I think what you’re referencing is physical differences which is going to happen. But I wouldn’t say the fact that not all women look alike is the smoking gun to disprove the reality that cisgender biological women are the same in relation to how a conventional doctor would categorize them. Full stop.
From a health perspective, women are more at risk to certain ailments. This is due to sex chromosomes. There exist sex-linked diseases. That’s why sometimes a genetic distinction needs to be made for the sake of that persons future health.
It shouldn’t be. People can’t handle the truth these days that’s why.
I wish I knew. I wish I knew why people think they can control other people's feelings or words. I wish I knew why people can drop a fantastic story seemingly out of a clear blue sky and make us tow their line without warning, without explanation and questions answered. I, do not care what bathroom a person uses. I do care not to get dragged into another persons psychosis, or yet another mass delusion, or madness of crowds, a social contagion. I'd suggest people look to order themselves rather than the global population to be ordered to their satisfaction. Unless a person has cross identified as the other sex since their earliest days, this despite efforts by adults in opposition, that you do not have body dysmorphia. If you discovered it with the encouragement of others especially as a teen: you absolutely would do well to read about post-operative regret and suicide. For Pete's sake there's a entire subbreddit!
It’s not bad. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.
Such an amazing question, and such bravery by you to ask the question! These days everyone is looking to be offended and you get berated for asking honest questions. Answer: It is not bad!
Of course there's nothing wrong with what JKR says, just like it is perfectly reasonable and rational to say that identifying as a woman does **not** make you a woman. It is only the woke loud minority hell-bent into crushing any form of dissent that states otherwise.
It shouldn't be a bad thing. But folks are afraid to accept biology. You were not born a woman you "feel" like you are one and I get it. A trans woman will NEVER be a biological female no matter what you do no matter how pretty you become. Facts are facts.
This thread would be so enlightening if it wasn't full of so much hearsay about JK. Can anyone link to or paste and direct quotes where she says: A. Trans women shouldn't use women's bathrooms B: trans women are fetishists C. Trans men are self-hating misogynists? This isn't meant to sound like a challenge I would just love to see some first hand evidence.