An abridged feminist perspective addressing all the major issues of the trans movement’s ideology

submitted by SnowAssMan from self.GenderCriticalGuys

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[–]SnowAssMan[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

So, I've split the conspectus into two sections. I'll post just section 1, for now, the sources will be at the end:

Section 1: Foundations of Gender

1) Gender is an umbrella term that either refers to male/female (e.g. ‘gender inequality’ refers to inequality between the sexes, i.e. men & boys’ privilege vs. discrimination against women & girls), or masculinity/femininity

2) Femininity is a construct, an ideology that promotes the sexual objectification/fetishisation, infantalisation, dehumanisation, subjugation of the female sex. Femininity is artificial secondary sex characteristics bestowed onto girls from birth. Femininity is sanctioned self-harm. Femininity is the opposite of freedom

3) A woman is an adult human female (not a construct), like a hen is a female chicken. A female, feral child may believe herself an animal, but she is a girl

4) A transgendered male’s sex is unambiguous & binary, not assigned, not intersex, not female, but male. Therefore excluding them on these grounds does not indirectly exclude any women

5) ‘Gender identity’ either refers to natal/socialised gender, which is axiomatic in sociology & related disciplines, & describes a social identity resulting from gendered socialisation (children receive separate upbringing styles based on their sex), or a transgender person’s cross-gender self-identification/felt gender.

6) Felt-gender is undetectable, indefinable & inconsequential

7) The trans movement conflates men’s cross-gender self-identification/preferred sex/felt gender, with women’s socialised gender, in order to a) erase transgendered males’ socialised gender & b) equate their felt-gender with women’s socialised gender

8) David Reimer was socialised a boy for the first 2 years of his life, then sexual abuse took its place under the guise of “re-socialisation”. So the major case purported to favour felt-gender theory, did the opposite. Conversely, the vast majority of infant males assigned female at birth & socialised accordingly did not desist

9) Trans people prove that socialised gender > felt-gender, otherwise they wouldn’t have to train themselves not to walk, talk, behave etc. in a gender-congruent way, nor would they have to put any effort in to emulating the gendered behaviours of their preferred sex

10) Transgender people’s gendered behavioural trends are consistent with their socialised gender & inconsistent with their felt gender e.g. positions of power, media representation, crime rates, HIV distribution are male-dominated, while attempted suicide is female-dominated, regardless of trans or not

11) All transgendered males present as feminine (names & pronouns, minimally) & most make their bodies appear female (e.g. tucking). The ideology of the trans movement claims men can be female & feminine, yet most transgendered males still prefer to be women, presumably because they know they are male, but crave the association with being female, which they believe feminine names & pronouns & female labels like ‘woman’ & ‘female’ will afford them, as these don’t just connote femaleness, the latter two even denote it. Therefore transgender-males themselves don’t actually believe the trans movement’s ideological claims (that the state of being female & feminine are separate from ‘woman’), but in fact agree with feminism that ‘woman’ is defined as female, otherwise they’d have no desire to be one. This is why ‘preferred sex’ rather than “gender identity” is a more accurate term to describe transgenderism

12) A man's cross-gender self-identification & preferred sex do not erase his socialisation, or his sex, respectively. Quite the reverse, his gendered socialisation & unambiguous male sex make his felt gender & preferred sex redundant, as he shares his biology, socialisation & privilege with men & lacks women’s biology, socialisation & the sexism that is universal to women’s experience, with nothing but a feeling to make up for it

Sources:

1) https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/sociology-and-social-reform/sociology-general-terms-and-concepts/masculinity

https://genderedinnovations.stanford.edu/terms/femininities.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_of_domination#Benefits_among_gender

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_of_domination#Wage_gap_among_gender

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_of_domination#Representation_among_gender

3) https://www.oed.com/oed2/00286737

4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female

5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_gender#Gender_and_socialization

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialization#Gender_socialization

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3u1A0Mrjjw

8) https://sites.oxy.edu/clint/physio/article/GenderIdentityOutcomeinFemaleRaised46XYPersonswithPenileAgenesisCloacalExstrophyoftheBladderorPenileAblation.pdf

9) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACVM1BUY8tY

https://www.reddit.com/r/FTMMen/comments/cptx7d/what_i_learned_in_speech_therapy/

10) https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/amp34567467/election-2020-trans-winners/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transgender_characters_in_film_and_television

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_trans_characters

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/848759/hmpps-offender-equalities-2018-19.pdf

https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/gender/transgender/index.htmlhttps://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/statistics

https://save.org/about-suicide/suicide-facts/

https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/142/4/e20174218?sso=1&sso_redirect_count=1&nfstatus=401&nftoken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&nfstatusdescription=ERROR%3a+No+local+token

I posted it here the lazy way, but in the finished product the sources would be linked the way they are on Wikipedia. What do you think? Should I inlclude number 11? Should I refer to them as 'transgendered males'? Should they be numbered? Once I'm done, I'll publish the first edition on Medium. Ideally the second edition would be a collaborative effort by members of the GC sub.

[–]FlippyKing 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

In 2, "Femininity is artificial secondary sex characteristics " I think "secondary sex characteristics" are like hips and breasts but, regardless of what specifically, I think that phrase already points to a biological thing, so I think you might want a different phrase. Any phrase that puts sex with gender will be seized upon to create the smoke screen of confusion the whole movement is built on, so maybe the phrase you start 2 with, that it is a construct is sufficient. Is "social construct" insufficient? If not maybe that could be used, if you're open to that. The last two sentences of 2 seem unneeded and kinda like hyperbole to me, or like part of a "polemic" I think might be the word. I think it would be easy to say "no they're not" for the genderists to those but not to the other ideas in 2. Consider if 2 might be finished before the last two sentences in it.

Five is interesting. I don't type this paragraph to counter it, but I really didn't know they ever pinned down what a gender identity is, or who has them and why some don't. I've seen bogus stuff saying if you don't have one then you're really non-binary, as if "no we're non-playing your game" is not good enough for them. Tactically, I think you are offering them ways of solving their problem for them. Gender identity makes no sense, and maybe I like the idea of seeing it as an aspect of one's sense of self that some how gendered in a way that mimics sex and is described by language stolen from the descriptors for social constructs of masculine and feminine but that does not roll of the tongue. Really, it makes absolutely no sense to me that this inner sense they claim to have of themselves makes them conflate themselves with people of the opposite sex and to do it while hiding being people with intersexed conditions. It sounds like a mental illness, not an actual sense of one's self.

Six seems to me to be more like what 5 'could' be or they overlap maybe. Gender is felt; and for anyone to know it, the person must state their claim of having a gender. This is quite different from sex which is observable. This difference is manipulated by gender activists where they pretend the recording of a person's sex at birth is actually an "assignment" of gender when it is not. If sex and gender are accepted by gender activists as different, then there is no reason other than being caught up in the throws of their own unchecked and uncontrolled mental illness to object to recording sex on a birth certificate and leaving it alone for all but the 0.02% of the population that is truly intersexed.

The rest I think allows too much to cross this inner/outer divide. Sex is observable, gender is only a claim made by someone to everyone except the one making the claim. Misgendering is not a real thing, as gender is not a real tangible thing, because it is simply correctly sexing someone.

I guess I want to add this thought: If there is a theory behind gender, then that theory has to serve our species better than our current and traditional and common-sense way of refering to observable sex. It does not. The simple fact that pronouns must be announced and can not be "assumed", shows the theory (if there is one) is already more like convoluted epi-cycles than a clearer understanding of observable reality requires. In the same way that epi-cycles were needed to make sense of a earth-centered solar system but not needed for a heliocentric solar system, the burden of learning people's pronouns only serves a self-centered person's view of those around them and is not needed if we recognize that pronouns are used seamlessly when we assume they correspond to someone's sex. Nothing about "gender" makes the world make more sense or simplifies anything. It explains and predicts nothing because it is at best based on lies and fake science. Mark Rippetoe has a couple of videos on his youtube channel going into deep detail about sports performance. The one that jumps out is that world records setting women's performances in track and field are common among male high school athletes. Gender as an identity is at best irrelevant, but mostly likely it is just a lie or a result of a mental illness.

I worry that wiki will change the definitions you are using and change what you are referring to. Maybe, and this is me saying "do more work" so I agree I should not do that, go to the sources and quote them and cite them directly and see wiki as quoting a book that is quoting something else-- we would always want to go to the actual source to make sure the quote is accurate and not out of context anyway.

This thought became clearer to me as I read this version: that gender identity is a stupid idea worth tackling in the manner you are trying but that it is separate from Radical Feminism's issues with femininity. But I see some aspects of femininity as analogous to tactics used by people who are less large or less powerful than those they are competing with or directly fighting with or negotiating with. There's a yielding aspect to femininity that is subservient but there is also an aspect of it that is like judo. Some things labeled as being feminine where things I would label as just not being an asshole, and similarly things called masculine that I saw as just being an asshole. What is feminine or masculine differs by social class. I know when I started traveling in middle class social circles, the ideas of what "being a man" is were not what I saw growing up working class. There's nothing "inner" about any of that, it's all socialized and it's all adapting to one's environment with one's resources and capabilities.

Numbering is good, it makes it clear and easy to deal with. I think you'll find it allows you to pare down your thoughts and really make a tight and clear finished product.

Good work!

[–]SnowAssMan[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I agree with your point about the drawbacks of linking a Wiki page & that I should instead link the source itself. Here is yet another updated version, just the first half again (without any sources this time though), Im hoping it clears up more on the subject of gender:

The different uses & meanings of gender & correcting common errors:

1a) Gender (synonym for sex): male/female

1b) Gender (construct): masculinity/femininity

2a) Gender identity: a social identity, not naturally occurring, but shaped by gendered upbringing in accordance with the norms associated with a child’s sex, not their preferred sex

2b) Cross-gender self-identification/felt-gender (almost exclusively incorrectly referred to as ‘gender identity’, & usually shortened to: ‘gender’): one of many, usually temporary phenomena collectively referred to as ‘childhood gender nonconformity’ that typically affects underage homosexuals.

• In the West this identity transition is considered proper medical treatment, indirectly pathologising homosexuality & making transgenderism into a method of conversion therapy

• Recently, the definition has stretched to include non-homosexual men with a paraphilia called autogynaephilia

3) Gender role (often shorted to ‘gender’): a traditionally masculine, or feminine social role, or performance

4) Woman (not a construct): an adult human female

5) Transgender men are adult human male transsexuals who present as feminine (names & pronouns, minimally) & most make their bodies appear female (e.g. tucking), but they share their sex, their gender identity & their privilege with men, which makes their preferred sex, felt gender & strong desire to appropriate women redundant:

a) Transgender men’s sex is unambiguous & binary, not on a spectrum, not assigned, not intersex, not female, but male. Therefore excluding them on these grounds does not indirectly exclude any women

b) Transgender men’s felt-gender is undetectable, indefinable & inconsequential:

• David Reimer was socialised a boy for the first 2 years of his life, then sexual abuse took its place under the guise of “re-socialisation”. So the major case purported to favour felt-gender theory, did the opposite. Conversely, the vast majority of infant males assigned female at birth & socialised accordingly did not desist

• Transsexuals prove that gender identity > felt-gender, otherwise they wouldn’t have to train themselves not to walk, talk, behave etc. in a gender-congruent way, nor would they have to put any effort in to emulating the gendered behaviours of their preferred sex

• Transsexuals’ gendered behavioural trends are consistent with their gender identity & inconsistent with their felt gender e.g. positions of power, media representation, crime rates, HIV distribution are male-dominated, while attempted suicide is female-dominated, regardless of trans or not

[–]FlippyKing 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I have to stress that I do not envy the task you set for yourself. I do not know if the epicycles used to describe the solar system's movements in a geocentric model had a complicated and confusing vocabulary to it but I imagine it did just based on the how the standard model of particle physics has grown in complexity while parsing what is truly minutia. Similarly it still seems to me that you are arguing on their territory.

You may see your way through all this clearly and see a straight line of clear reason as you read through it all. That I struggle to is probably more on me than anyone else. But, if you find yourself ripping your hair out as you organize this and cover all their bases, realize their baselines (I hope you get baseball references) seem like pretzel lines to more and more bases because they rely on confusion. Perhaps start with men and women, perhaps move on to boys and girls who must grow close to their full size before they enter puberty, and how sexual reproduction between two sexes is how it is done on Earth by all species that use sexual reproduction. For all but a very small number of people, around 0.02%, male and female are accurate description of their bodies and which one (and only one) of the two (and only two) roles they can potentially play in reproduction.

Maybe you will find it easier to swat away their arguments by starting with your own reality based argument instead of diving right into their mud.

The history of the word gender, somewhat spelled out by Paul Cockshott in one of his writings on gender on his blog (the name of it is his name) shows that the earliest uses of the word in peer reviewed journals was as a polite substitute for sex.

David Reimer: do tras claim that his ordeal proves trans is real? How? There can be no logic to any defense of what happened to that kid.

[–]SnowAssMan[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

How about this much shorter version?

Correcting the Self-Identification Cult’s Misinformation

  1. Gender: a) synonym for sex: male/female (nature) b) construct: masculinity/femininity (culture)

  2. Gender Identity: determined by socialisation (nurture)

  3. Gender role: performance of femininity or masculinity (choice)

  4. Cross-gender identification: determined by self-identification, desistance is typical (phase)

• Woman: adult human female, not a role, not defined by femininity, not determined by self-identification, not a man’s mental illness, not a man’s paraphilia, not a phase

• Transsexual – male by nature & nurture who self-identifies as neither female, nor feminine but something indefinable, undetectable & inconsequential, for which misnomers such as “woman”, “gender” & “gender identity” are always used

[–]FlippyKing 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I like shorter! Sorry also, I don't check in on social media all that often anymore.

I don't know what gender identity is, I don't think it exists outside of someone's imagination, so I'm very not into 2. It isn't determined by socialization. To give it any credence at all maybe it is analogous to stress vs strain to borrow an engineering/materials sciences concept. But I don't think that is it, because it is first and foremost something that can not be measured or observed. I still can not get beyond how an inner identity is somehow "gendered" or how it is imitative of sex which is an observable physical characteristic. Gender Identity is metaphysical, gender is a social construct, sex is physical, they can only be compared or contrasted as angels and linguine in clams sauce can be compared or contrasted.

OK, so as I type and think I think I see a way in. Definitions have contexts. Dictionaries might give gernal usage definitions, but when you pin down ideas or start using them, they always need fine tuning. You see this, or at least you used to see this, in social science peer reviewed journals. They would clarify how they used a term in the paper to make sure they are not conflating uses of the word. Another way of clarifying a definition is to classify the term, as I did with stress and strain above pointing out that I'm referring to the engineering use of the ideas, not the general usage.

So, Gender Identity is first and foremost a metaphysical concept. I would love to see how anyone denies this. You can not define terms in a way that appeases everyone. If language is fossilized poetry as Walt Whitman said, and thus art, well the sad thing is artists make choices, cast aside what they do not choose, and they define limits. A character has definite characteristics for a writer and an actor and a director, and the character is clearly defined in an audiences' mind. It is not and never all things to everyone, even if it is nuanced and complicated and can be seen from multiple points of view. A melodic phrase does not exist in every time signature in every key with every beat division and every note, it is what it is and it rules out everything else otherwise there's nothing for the composer or arranger to word with.

OK, so "Gender" is: a linguistic term for the tendency in some languages to assign differing forms to certain words based on characteristics that are perceived or assumed to be sex-related or analogous to sex. "Gender" in general usage is often a polite synonym for sex. "Gender" in sociology and anthropology and perhaps economics is a term used to describe the societal roles and expectations placed on individuals and groups of individuals based on their sex, including conformance and non-conformance with those roles and expectations. "Gender in psychology might be the metaphysical concept that a person has a property related to their sense of a relationship to sex-based roles and expectations.

Gender Identity is a metaphysical concept for a type of self-perception that some but not all people claim to have regarding their own status with regard to their own sex that may or may not differ from their physical property of sex.

3 is fine.

  1. is just not a definition. Cross-gender identification sounds to me like a term used to describe when a person's gender identity is at odds with their physical property of sex.

Sex has to be defined, and luckily it is probably the only thing here that can be actually defined. Sex is the biological term for the kind of reproduction used by a great many species across multiple phylum where reproduction requires the pairing of two and only two gamete types, each of which are produced by and only by the male or female of the species depending on the type of gamete produced. (I'm sure there's a better definition, I have no biology experience)

Woman: Adult human female is sufficient I think. We're not the ones tacking extra BS onto it, they are. The key to a theory is it's simplicity and it's usefulness. Gender theory is not simple but more importantly it is useless. How are babies made? We can explain that, they have no idea. If their theory could explain things equally to basic biology then the question is which has less nonsense and less ideas that cancel out in the end (analogous to epicycles of the geocentric model which works but is far more tedious and filled with nonsense than the heliocentric model which just has ellipses (though Venus is kind of circular if I remember correctly)

I think transexual has to be a surgically altered person so that their genitalia is mutilated into resembling the appearance, but not function, of wghat is the genitalia of their opposite sex. Transgender is someone who either wishes to be treated as or simply acts as a person of the opposite sex. These are separate from ideas of dysphoria or dysmorphia, and separate from a catagory that could seem like a 'transsexual' but is not because they could be a victim of a genital mutilation that they did not-- and we know that such victims exist.

I wouldn't go as far as to describe a kid, boy or girl, running around saying "I'm a girl" or the various ways kids might explore finding out who they are in the world as cross-gender identification. That sounds like a chance to put them in a box they will have a tougher time getting out of, by design. This might make it something that is always a paragraph and never a one-liner, but I think the one liner serves their purpose and not ours. The sad thing is if you tell kids they have ridiculous options as if they are legitimate options then kids are going to at least explore the ridiculous before abandoning them (unless they are love-bombed and drugged out of an escape). For proof of that I ask you to consider how few actual astronauts there are compared to how many kids want to be astronauts. Same could be said for dinosaus, plenty of kids want to be dinosaurs but very few are.