GC: What's a good age-appropriate way to explain to an 8 year old boy why it would be creepy, wrong, and disrespectful towards women for him to get earrings for Christmas like his sisters received, without making him feel like he's creepy and wrong himself?

MarkTwainiac · 2022-12-27T17:53:45+00:00

In the US, where I come from, there have always been clip-on earrings, though. My mother (born early 1920s) and grandmothers (born late 1800s) all wore clip-on earrings their whole lives because they never got their ears pierced.

Although I personally have had pierced ears since age 16, for most of my life when I still wore jewelry I'd wear clip-on earrings sometimes. In the case of the large, heavy dangling earrings I wore a lot in the 80s and 90s, I preferred clip-ons coz otherwise the earrings would pull down the earlobes and pierced holes so they got stretched out and elongated.

Clip-on earrings are what my kids would wear when playing "dress up" when they were little.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-12-27T17:44:02+00:00

I agree. Nothing wrong, creepy or disrespectful to women about about boys/men getting earrings for Christmas or any other occasion - or about them wearing earrings, either.

Lots of men in various cultures including Western cultures have worn earrings in the course of history. During the era when Europeans travelled the seas in great sailing ships, men who worked as seamen and as pirates, for example.

In more recent eras, plenty of men have worn earrings too. To wit:

Brian Eno, early 70s: https://twitter.com/dark_shark/status/960034160973774853/photo/1

David Bowie, early 70s: https://twitter.com/dark_shark/status/977075128201654272/photo/1

MarkTwainiac · 2022-11-17T03:16:55+00:00

No, pronouns are not the personal property of people being referred to, or of people who are trying to use novel gender identities, drugs, surgeries, cosplay and make-believe to try to obscure and deny their sex. English ronouns are parts of speech of a shared language spoken by 1.35 billion people on the planet, a language that has long-standing rules of grammar and usage going back hundreds of years that many people worked hard to learn so we can communicate clearly and accurately.

I will call Buck by Buck's preferred name, Buck, rather than by Buck's legal name, Jake Miller, or Buck's given name. But that's as far as I will go with genderflecting to and about Buck. I'm not gonna be guilt-tripped into calling Buck a he when I know that Buck is a she who has taken massive amounts of exogenous T and had her breasts cut off.

During the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King came up with and imposed new rules of etiquette on his court, servants and the people of France to keep everyone in line and always walking on eggshells. The new rules of etiquette the gender identity tyrants have come up and want to impose on everyone else are just as draconian and just as much a power play. No thank you.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-10-31T23:22:58+00:00

You initially said

I disagree with the one about not allowing your kid to wear clothes of the opposite gender.

Which prompted me to ask

Can you point to the part in the SEGM report and/or the NHS [guidance] where they mention not allowing your kid to wear clothes of the opposite gender. Coz I missed it.

To which you have now responded,

According to Daily Mail, the new NHS draft guidelines will also discourage the act of children dressing in clothes of the opposite sex.

Huh? Since when can a story in the Daily Mail be taken as an accurate reflection of what the NHS guidance the SEGM report say?

I asked if you have read the interim Cass report. In response you say

I just googled this as I've never heard of it and while I didn't read the entire report I did read the summary of key points.

No offense, but if you've never heard of the Cass investigation, the Cass report and can't be bothered even to read the interim Cass report in its entirety, then you're just admitting that you are very poorly informed about the issues around "child transition" and aren't curious, interested or caring enough about the unfortunate kids being sucked into gender ideology and being egregiously abused by adults in the pursuit of "child transition" to become fully informed.

You initially said

I also disagree with the advice about not allowing kids to socially transition. Unlike medical interventions, pronouns and identities are not permanent.

In response, I gave a long thoughtful comment illustrating that, as the Cass report says, "socially transitioning" of children is "not a neutral act." Rather it's an act that locks kids into a claimed gender identity at a very early age and makes it very difficult for those kids to desist, dial back and reverse course.

But instead of addressing any of the points I raised about children who are socially transitioned when they are toddlers and very young kids years before puberty of adolescence, you come back with

I personally think when you become an adult you are personally responsible for yourself and who you have contact with.

WTF? What does your view about adults have to do with the pre-pubescent children and minor age adolescents under discussion and at issue here? These kids are all living either in their parents' homes or in state care. They have no choice about who they have contact with. Why are you making it seem that toddlers, pre-schoolers, kids in primary school and young adolescents should be considered just as "personally responsible" for themselves and who they have contact with as full-grown adults?

You deny what is happening, and has happened, to vulnerable children transitioned by their parents by dismissing what I said about the youngsters whom I mentioned by name out of hand as though I what I said has so little merit that it's not worth addressing. Instead, without any evidence you blithely assert

What is more likely to happen is parents are not accepting of their childs trans identity

Then you go on to deny that children transitioned by their parents and the other important adult authority figures in their lives are under any pressure to continue identifying as trans in order to please their parents and the other adults who are invested in these kids claiming to be trans.

That's not hat happens. If you want to stop identifying as trans, go ahead.

How on earth can Kai Shappley at age 11 stop identifying as trans when Kai's entire social identity and Kai's mother's whole life, social identity, social standing and job are based on her being the mother of a "trans child"? Kim Shappley, Kai's mom, has been very open about how starting when Kai was 18 months old, she spent several years repeatedly hitting, yelling at, punishing, praying over, shaming and depriving Kai for liking "girl toys" and "girl clothes" and for "acting girly." Because Kim S is a right-wing Christian fundamentalist and raging homophobe who feared that her toddler son's tastes and behavior indicated he might grow up to be gay - a prospect that filled homophobe mom with horror and panic over what others might think about her.

Now Kim works as a paid "gender activist" who trots Kai around the country and before the cameras so he can be a "trans child" show pony and mouthpiece for canned propaganda written by adult trans activists. How can Kai simply stop identifying as trans now? You really think Kai isn't fully aware that desisting from a trans identity would most likely result in Kai's mom going ballistic and in Kai being beaten, shamed, punished, bullied and deprived by mum and others in Kai's life all over again?

Your flip, callous attitude and total denial of what is happening, and has happened, to vulnerable children transitioned by their parents is gob-smacking.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-10-31T00:17:47+00:00

Can you point to the part in the SEGM report and/or the NHS where they mention

not allowing your kid to wear clothes of the opposite gender.

Coz I missed it.

BTW, I think we should move beyond the idea that little kid's clothes have "gender" and should be starkly different depending on children's sex. Kids of both sexes should be allowed to wear what they want. I wore my older brother's clothes after he died when we were little kids, and as I grew up I and all the kids I knew wore many unisex clothes - T shirts, turtlenecks, button-downs, pullovers, jeans, cords, overalls, sneakers, wellies/galoshes, hiking boots, Doc Martens, clogs, sweat pants, sweat shirts and hoodies, various sports gear, bomber jackets, puffer coats, overcoats, trench coats, rain slicks and so on. When I was in HS, I and many girls I knew did much of our clothes shopping in US Army Navy Surplus stores - we wore (men's) sailor's pants, tops, pea coats, polar jackets, army fatigues, men's Levi's...

When my own son was little, he loved trying on my clothes, shoes and accessories and dressing up in all sorts of garb considered "feminine" and "girly." I didn't care, neither did his dad. For a time when he was 5, my son's favorite outfit was a peculiar getup consisting of a Spider Man eye mask along with a pink tutu over baggy surfer shorts and a Gap T-shirt to which he had me attach (with binder clips from Staples, LOL) a linen dish cloth at the shoulders so the dish cloth flowed like a cape. The linen dish cloth, a gift my dad and his wife brought us from a trip to Ireland, had drawn/painted images on it of items used in Catholic church rituals that my 5 year-old son mistakenly thought were weapons and talismans signifying and conferring superpowers. When we walked down the street with him dressed like that, his getup brought smiles of amusement and appreciation to the faces of many passersby of all ages from all walks of life - many of whom would make approving remarks such as, "right on, kid" and "you do you, champ" and "good job, mom."

IMO, what is damaging to kids is telling them that if they like a particular kind of clothing - or toys - or they have interests and personality traits hat aren't exactly in keeping with the narrow, strict, regressive sex stereotypes widely associated with their sex - and which are confining and chafing to members of both sexes - it means they have the mind, psyche, soul, inner essence, feelings or "gender identity" of the opposite sex and must have somehow been "born in the wrong body."

I also disagree with the advice about not allowing kids to socially transition. Unlike medical interventions, pronouns and identities are not permanent.

Have you read the interim Cass report and other information about this? True, pronouns, identities, and identity labels chosen and put on kids at an early age are not permanent. But when children adopt an opposite-sex gender identity - or, more likely, they have an opposite-sex gender identity imposed on them by their parents and the other important adults in their lives as has happened to so many people as toddlers, pre-schoolers and early schoolers like Jackie Green, Jazz Jennings, Kai Shappley, Trinity Neal and Penelope Patterson - and these children's opposite-sex gender identities are announced to everyone they personally know and to the whole world on social media too - it becomes very difficult to nigh impossible for these children to express doubts and reverse course. Many youngsters who are socially transitioned as kids and have been constantly praised and celebrated for being "trans" derive their whole sense of self and sense of self-worth from their special status as "trans" children. And many of the parents of these kids base and obtain their own social identities, sense of self-worth, standing in the world and even their professional careers on being the mums/parents of a "trans child."

Kids like Jackie Green, Jazz Jennings, Kai Shappley, Trinity Neal, Penelope Patterson grow/grew up under huge parental and social pressure to continue identifying as "trans" to keep the adults in their lives, particularly their mums, happy. Many are acutely aware that if they desisted from "identifying as" the opposite sex, then their parents/mothers would be devastated and their parents/mothers would "lose face" and social standing. They have also been indoctrinated into believing that if they stop "identifying as" the opposite sex, they will be letting down other "trans kids" and "the LGBTQ+ community," fueling "transphobia," and encouraging "transphobic violence" and "hate" that will lead to mass suicides and mass murders of "trans people."

MarkTwainiac · 2022-10-29T19:30:00+00:00

You posted an unironic conspiracy theory about a trans cabal using people in favour of "push[ing] transition on kids" evidence-based medicine to further their trans agenda.

I never mentioned a "trans cabal" pushing "their trans agenda." I said

I've come to conclude that some very creepy, sinister people are behind the campaign to push transition on kids.

I never said that the creepy, sinister people behind this are trans. That's on you mate.

I think many of the creepy, sinister people behind this are "cis" men like Norman Spack and "cis" women like Tandy Aye. I think many of the creepy, sinister people behind this are "cis" child abusing mothers like Susie Green, Jeanette Jennings and Kim Shappley. I think many of the creepy, sinister people behind this are the "cis" men who run Big Pharma, and the many "cis" men who are pedophiles and defenders of pedophilia like the recently-resigned trustee of Mermaids, Jacob Breslow; Rüdiger Lautmann, author of "Lust for Children;" and Peter Tatchell.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-10-29T19:00:44+00:00

If your life has worked out so well, then why are are your posts so angry, aggressive, accusatory, hyperbolic, histrionic, puerile, emotionally overwrought, shouty and self-pitying?

If your own life choices have worked out so well for you and you are secure about who you are and confident that you made the right choices for yourself, why are you so bloody desperate to have your own personal choices "validated" and "affirmed" by other people's children following in your footsteps?

If you are a mature, secure adult with a healthy self-image and happy life, why the need to denigrate other posters by nasty name-calling? Why is nasty, snide, clearly adolescent name-calling - "you bozos;" "psychotic;" "terf on twitter simps for JK Rowling"; "cozy with neo-conservative christian fundamentalists under the guise of 'women's rights' " - your immediate knee-jerk response to so many posts you disagree with?

If your transition has worked out so well, how come your posts sound like the posts of so many dyed-in-the-wool misogynistic MRA incels and creepy woman-hating guys like Vaush?

Don't you realize that when you call feminists fascists for supporting women's rights and wanting to safeguard kids and young people with sex and gender distress, it makes you sound like Rush Limbaugh ranting about feminazis?

MarkTwainiac · 2022-10-29T18:35:59+00:00

I don't believe the NHS provides so-called "breast implants" for anyone except in the case of reconstruction surgeries for women who had to have mastectomies because of breast cancer - and perhaps on rare occasion in the case of women whose breasts grew to be drastically different in size and this caused severe distress and practical difficulties.

But my understanding is that even breast cancer patients who've had mastectomies and want reconstruction surgeries from the NHS later on still often have to wait for the second surgeries for years.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-10-29T03:03:44+00:00

Actually, they ["trans kids'"] often just kill themselves!

If this is the case, how come there are never any news stories, funerals, memorial services, obituaries, police reports, coroner's reports or social media post about these tragic deaths the children you call trans and claim are committing suicide in droves?

In the US and most other countries with functioning governments, all unexplained deaths of anyone of any age - but particularly of children - that occur and could possibly be a suicide or homicide have to be thoroughly investigated by police and a coroner/medical examiner before a death certificate is issued and the corpse/body is released to the family for burial or cremation. All deaths that occur outside of hospitals, nursing homes and hospices are automatically considered suspicious and get thorough investigation by police and medical examiners. (I can attest to this personally because several of my family members have died at home.)

But even many deaths that occur within health care facilities get the same sort of scrutiny.

So if all these kids are killing themselves, how come their deaths are always ignored by all the authorities in charge of investigating suspicious and untimely deaths?

MarkTwainiac · 2022-10-29T02:47:29+00:00

Hear, hear, PATM. You and I have had our differences, but I am with you 1000% on this. Anyone who has read our posts since Saidit was launched will know that neither one of us is coming to the issue of the safeguarding and protection of kids with gender dysphoria from an anti-science, right-wing, christian or homophobic perspective.

I happen to have a bunch of houseguests at my place this weekend for the memorial service of a longterm friend who died several weeks ago. Eight out of my 10 houseguests are homosexual. The other two are bisexual. Our deceased friend and his partner are/were gay men. We all first met in the 1970s and 80s. Many of us met and became close through the AIDS activist orgs Gay Men's Health Crisis and ACT UP.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-10-29T02:28:06+00:00

the term 'useful idiot' does not mean you are LITERALLY an idiot. It's a bit of a mean-spirited derogatory insult coined in vernacular to mean something else, and since MT decided that was the term she was going to use, it sort of sets the tone, don't you think?

From Webster: a naive or credulous person who can be manipulated or exploited to advance a cause or political agenda.

I used the term "useful idiots" fully aware of its meaning. I stand by my statements.

MT called people who care about the health and wellbeing of children with dysphoria 'useful idiots' in unknowing cohorts with some cabal of, and I quote, 'some very creepy, sinister people'.

Wut? I did not say

"people who care about the health and wellbeing of children with dysphoria" are all useful idiots."

On the contrary, I said something very different, namely:

not everyone who supports [social and medical] transition of kids and minor teens is doing so for nefarious reasons. Some people involved in this are naive, superficially well-meaning "useful idiots."

You are making a profound error in assuming that

people who care about the health and wellbeing of children with dysphoria

are the same as the people who promote social and medical transition of those children.

I and many other adults with experience raising our own children and who have professional experience in areas such as child development, youth education, pediatric and adolescent health care, counseling, youth sports, etc. care very much about the health and wellbeing of children with dysphoria. Because we care so much, we do not support social and medical transition of children and adolescent minors with dysphoria.

I think if you were to go through my post history on this sub, you'd find that I am pretty well informed, fairly measured in my views and that I choose my words very carefully. I care very much about the health and wellbeing of children of both sexes.

Sorry, but your posts on this thread strike me as the ravings of someone off his/her head and meds.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-10-29T02:16:37+00:00

There's no such thing as "trans kids." There are kids with a variety of mental health and social adjustment problems who have been and are being labelled "trans" by the adults in their lives.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-10-28T01:24:31+00:00

Also, it's so much better for people who decide to undergo medical transition to do so only after they've gone through full sexual and brain development during and after puberty of adolescence. It breaks my heart that kids put on "puberty blockers" followed by cross-sex Big Pharma hormones like Jazz Jennings not only have been rendered sterile, but they've been left without the capacity have adult libido, adult sexual pleasure and orgasm - and their overall cognitive abilities appear to have been permanently impaired as well.

I am not usually a "conspiracy theorist," but I've come to conclude that some very creepy, sinister people are behind the campaign to push transition on kids. Of course, not everyone who supports transition of kids and minor teens is doing so for nefarious reasons. Some people involved in this are naive, superficially well-meaning "useful idiots." But the big impetus is coming from some real creeps and lunatics.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-10-12T01:59:17+00:00

But all the top-rated comments on that thread totally agree with you!

I don't know what to make of this being up voted by 10 in under an hour, on a site that comparatively is no reddit when it comes to traffic. Granted, some may have not read the linked article in full, as I did. Suffice it to say, the article strays far from what I have come to understand is what the majority of gc and radical

Upvoting of a thread sharing an article doesn't necessarily mean agreement with the views in the article. Upvoting indicates the level of interest amongst site users who've seen it, not endorsement of the views.

The number of upvotes in an hour also indicates the number of users logged on during that particular time frame, not the collective views of all users of the site who log on in the course of a week...

I'm struggling to see any reason someone would want to promote this on a supposedly radical leaning feminist site.

I think a core issue here is that you are confusing posting an article with promoting the views in that article. Another issue is that Ovarit is a site for and focused on women, but it doesn't require everyone to be "radical leaning feminist."

MarkTwainiac · 2022-09-18T05:34:26+00:00

I suggest posting the whole thing, and also posting it again divided into separate sections. That way you have the best chance of reaching people with markedly different attention spans.

Lots of written works that became books which were published all of a piece started out as chapters published serially in newspapers.

Music has followed a similar pattern. Musicians make whole albums they think of as collective works, but single songs short enough for radio airplay have always been spun off from record albums and sold and promoted separately.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-08-31T05:23:48+00:00

I remember reaiding for the year of 2018, only 32 TIMs were murdered compared 956 women in the same year, it's such a ridiculous talking point.

What country is it where 32 TIMs and 956 women were murdered in 2018?

The FBI says that in the USA 3,180 female persons died of homicide in 2018. Trans activist organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign say 28 TIMs died of homicide in the USA that year. Which is a ratio of more than 100 to 1. Usually 8-9 women are murdered in the US every day. So more women die of homicide in any 3.5 day period than TIMs do in an entire year.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/topic-pages/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-1.xls

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/16/health/transgender-deaths-2018

But given the huge disparity between the number of women and the number of TIMs in the population, to make a more accurate comparison, you have to look at the rates of homicide per 100K persons in the population. When this is done, TIMs (including the "black transwomen" and "transwomen of color" who are supposedly being murdered every minute in the US) turn out to have the lowest homicide rate of any demographic group. They are the least likely group to end up as murder victims.

But there sure are a lot of TIMs in the US who've been convicted of murder, including serial murders of women and girls, or who are awaiting trial on murder charges. Look into Dana Rivers - a TIM who murdered two lesbians and their son in Oakland, CA - and serial killer of women, Harvey Marcelin/Marcelin Harvey, who after spending decades in NY state prison for murdering two women was released in 2019 at age 81, and two years later brutally murdered and dismembered a woman he met when he was placed in a shelter for women. Marcelin put the parts of the woman's body in plastic trash bags and scattered them around the city, but he kept her head in his apartment.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/09/trans-serial-killer-harvey-marcelins-first-prison-interview/

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/30/nyregion/how-did-a-two-time-killer-get-out-to-be-charged-again-at-age-83.html

The person before the parole panel in June 2019 was tall and slim, in far better shape than 81 years of life might have suggested. Mild and polite, the supplicant seemed nothing like the murderer who had spent decades in prison, first for shooting a girlfriend dead in 1963, and then for stabbing another in 1985, stuffing her corpse into a bag and leaving it in Central Park

Decades worth of police documents and court records detail the life of Ms. Harvey, a transgender woman who transitioned at some point after her release from prison [in 2019]. Central to her tale are more than three decades of parole board minutes obtained through the state’s Freedom of Information Law. In them, she insists that authorities exaggerated evidence, changes stories about crimes she admitted and veers between contrition and blaming those she killed.

The records include several examples of her harassing or attacking women throughout her life. She was accused of attempted rape at 14; the victim was an 8-year-old girl. Ms. Harvey, who by her own account struggled with her mental health, said she had to choke down rage when women challenged her manliness before she transitioned — making fun of her soft voice, for example.

A homeless shelter worker and people close to Ms. Leyden questioned whether, despite her gender identity, Ms. Harvey should have been placed in a homeless shelter for women, given her history of attacking and murdering them. Speaking from Rikers to The New York Post, Ms. Harvey referred to herself as having two personas: one, a violent male named Harvey Marcelin — the name she used for most of her life and is included in court records — and the other, a soft-spoken woman named Marceline Harvey.

Immediately after her 2019 release, she sought housing in the Bronx [at a shelter for women].

Ms. Harvey “presented as a mild spoken, very tall Black man,” said Anne Brennan, the nurse practitioner who ran the intake. “I said, ‘Well, why are you in the women’s shelter?’”

Ms. Brennan said she told Ms. Harvey that placing her in a women’s shelter seemed like a bad idea, given her history of killing women. Despite her objections, Ms. Brennan said her supervisors allowed Ms. Harvey entry.

“Apparently his feelings and identity were far more important than all the other women that were terrified of him,” she said.

Of course even as the NY Times recounts the story of this awful man's gruesome crimes, the "paper of record" assures readers:

But transgender people are far more likely to become victims of violence, not perpetrators, and data from the National Center for Transgender Equality suggests more than half of transgender people who stay in shelters encounter harassment.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-08-27T19:55:45+00:00

I dunno if true crime documentaries, and crime statistics generally, will "peak trans" people. But they certainly do illustrate the ridiculousness of the totally bullshit claims constantly made by histrionic TRAs that males who "identify as" the opposite sex are 1) "the most vulnerable" and "most victimized" and most sexually fetishized and sexually-preyed upon people in society; and 2) TIMs suffer much higher rates of sexual harassment, predation, rape and other forms of sex abuse, murder, serial killings, assault and battery, sex trafficking, stalking, menacing, voyeurism, groping, spy camming, etc at the hands of other males than girls and women do.

When I hear the line that TIMs are the most vulnerable and are much more likely to be raped, murdered and sexually abused by men and boys than girls and women are, I always ask: then how come the stories of TIM crime victims don't dominate on any of the myriad true crime shows? Or on the nightly news?

The true crime genre has been around for a long, long time, as has the "if it bleeds, it leads" ethos in local television news. Male cross-dressers and transvestites have been around for a long time too. There are thousands of episodes of true crime series available for anyone to see going back decades. Yet hardly any of these episodes feature male "trans" persons as victims. Which is odd given that there's supposedly an "epidemic" of "transphobic violence" and TIMs are supposedly being assaulted and murdered in the streets on the daily just for being their "authentic selves." A grand conspiracy to cover up all this crime must be going on, right? /s

TIMs like most men have no idea what it's like to go through life as a female person.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-05T21:44:08+00:00

There a plenty of true things that a person can lose a job or opportunity for acknowledging because it upsets another person. Why should this be different?

Please name some of the "plenty of true things that a person can lose a job or opportunity of acknowledging" and specify in what countries or local jurisdictions you mean. I know that in countries like North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and China, people can be fired and penalized for saying "plenty of true things" - but this traditionally hasn't been the case in countries with robust civil rights and freedom of speech.

Sorry if I misunderstand you, but it sounds like you think that firing and penalizing people for saying "true things" is a good thing, or at least justifiable. Exactly which "true things" do you think people should lose their jobs and other opportunities for saying?

Do you think people should lose their jobs and opportunities for saying these things ever, or only in certain settings?

Interestingly, the decision in the employment tribunal of Maya Forstater comes out tomorrow, July 6.

ETA: The tribunal has ruled in Forstater's favor on the main point: that the think tank/NGO she previously worked for did indeed illegally discriminate against and "victimise" her for the beliefs he expressed on Twitter and in other writings - namely that sex is real; sex has enormous implications in life, law and policy especially for female people; and human beings can't change sex.

In other words, the GC woman on whose account a judge of the UK High Court ruled that GC beliefs are legally protected under the EA of 2010, has won another huge victory not just for GC women and men, but for all working people, and for free speech in the UK.

The decision of the tribunal released today, which I am just beginning to read and haven't gotten through in entirety yet, says on page 2:

The Claimant holds the belief that biological sex is real, important, immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity. She considers that statements such as “woman means adult human female” or “trans women are male” are statements of neutral fact and are not expressions of antipathy towards trans people or “transphobic”.

Page 3:

In the course of her evidence in the present hearing, Ms Forstater said the following about her belief, when asked about a tweet in which she referred to “literal delusions”: “I have made clear that I have used the word “woman” to mean adult female. It is impossible for a male to become female. It is possible to undergo a social transition. Anyone who believes a male can become female and give birth, that is a delusion. My belief is that sex is real and immutable. I haven’t expressed an opinion on gender.”

The tribunal has specifically ruled that although some might find them offensive, the following statements of Forstater's are simply "straightforward expressions" of her legally protected beliefs that are themselves lawful to say or write and "worthy of protection" even in at work, in work products and in contexts related to the workplace and work:

“other people are not compelled to accept it [the proposition that a transwoman is a woman] as relating to any material reality”

and

“a man’s internal feeling that he is a woman has no basis in material reality”.

The tribunal also has found that there was nothing objectionable or unlawful about instances

where Ms Forstater drew a comparison between transwomen and Rachel Dolezal...

the point that Ms Forstater was making – that there is an analogy to be drawn between someone who is white identifying as black and someone who is (according to gender critical belief) male identifying as a woman – did little more than assert her gender critical belief.

The tribunal found that

in the context of a discussion of whether recognising transwomen as female potentially posed a risk to women and girls

It was lawful and reasonable for Forstater to say

“the places that women and girls get assaulted and harassed are ‘normal life’”

This was not, as CGD’s counsel had argued, “catastrophising” but was instead “an unobjectionable observation in the course of the debate … not an objectively unreasonable observation to make”

The tribunal found that it was within Forstater's legally-protected rights to say that

allowing male-bodied individuals access to women-only spaces gave rise to “an increase in risks, threats and discomfort” to women and girls

And to describe

opposing views [to hers] as “stupid, dangerous or unfair”

And to refer to London banking executive Pips Bunce, who goes to his job in the City of London dressed as his alter ego "Pippa" a few days a week as a

“part time cross dresser”

(For those not aware: Bunce, a heterosexual father who is married to a woman, has been rewarded for his cross-dressing at work by being named one of Britain's "top women in business" by the Financial Times. Bunce has also been feted, showered with praised and given awards by "LGBTQ" orgs and media outlets for advancing "LGBTQ diversity and inclusion" and for being a model of "the LGBTQ" whose cross-dressing at work shows "courage and bravery" on behalf of "LGBTQ rights." Many others of course think that it's preposterous to say that straight white men who bring their cross-dressing kinks to work like Bunce are advancing gay rights, and believe that holding up Bunce as an admirable model of "the LGBTQ" makes a mockery of "the LGBTQ" and will cause outsiders to be less accepting, not more.)

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-05T14:53:49+00:00

Please spell out exactly what you mean by "transition" here. And say where the money has come from/is coming from to cover the costs of whatever "transition" entails.

Is the hypothetical person you have in mind male or female? How old is he/she? Does he/she have a spouse and children? Is his/her family of origin still alive - if so, what is this person's relationship with them like? Did this person's "gender journey" and "transition" entail trampling on the boundaries of any family members or friends, issuing ultimatums and threats, throwing tantrums, creating needless drama, taking advantage of and/or behaving abusively towards anyone else?

What are the motivations behind this person's "transition"?

How exactly has "transition enabled them to live a more normal life"? Doesn't deciding to "transition" mean going in the opposite direction of living "a normal life"?

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-05T14:38:07+00:00

It's not my definition.

Whose definition is it then? Where does it come from?

I have provided links to the world's most respected and trustworthy dictionaries starting with Johnson's showing that all agree that a woman is an adult human female. I have looked through the 20-30 dictionaries and longstanding style guides that I have in my own house, and at every online dictionary I can find, and I have not come across a single one that says as you do that a woman is a person of either sex

who identifies with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex.

Yet you insist that the definition of woman you put forward is the definition that is the most commonly used, most widely understood and universally agreed-on and accepted. When asked to provide evidence that this is really the case, you provide none. You just keep insisting that since you personally believe the word woman means what you have said means, it must be so - and that's that. Just like Humpty Dumpty did to Alice.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-05T14:15:11+00:00

I do not have the power to define, or redefine words.

Yet you've spent the whole thread redefining the word woman in a very idiosyncratic way solely to suit yourself and to conform with the incredibly misogynistic views you espouse. You even acknowledge this outright in the last line of this particular post when you refer to:

the definition that I've laid out for the word "woman"

On this thread, I have linked to the most authoritative dictionaries of the English language which show that the time-honored, long-established meaning of the word woman is an adult human female. But throughout you have refused to accept that dictionaries written by learned lexicographers from Samuel Johnson to the current-day crew at the OED have any weight whatsoever. Instead you pretend that everyone just makes up their own definition of words, and therefore it's completely reasonable for you to

describe a different definition

for the word woman and to expect it to be taken just as seriously as the actual definition of woman documented in the world's most esteemed and trustworthy dictionaries. Which means you do in fact grant to yourself

the power to define, or redefine words.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-05T13:44:57+00:00

I've yet to hear an argument for why it's sexist to recognise that society classifies people according to sexist stereotypes.

But you didn't say that "society classifies people according to sexist stereotypes"! There's nothing sexist about saying that.

If you did say that, the only objection I would raise would be to point out that it's too broad and sweeping a statement. Fact is, humanity doesn't just have one society: there are many different human societies, which vary considerably in the extent to which they engage in and endorse sex stereotyping, and in the exact nature of the sex stereotyping those societies engage in and promote. The societies of Saudi Arabia, Cambodia, Sweden, Israel, Poland, Brazil, the Phillipines, Samoa, India, China, North Korea, South Korea all differ from one another in these regards.

Even within the same society there is not unanimity of views - not even close. Within the USA and UK, for example, there is vast diversity of opinion between New York City and a Mormon enclave in Utah, and between Chelsea and Kensington in West London and a mostly Muslim area of East London or the Midlands. Vast diversity of opinion regarding sex stereotyping often exists from one neighborhood to the next in the same locale - for example, in NYC there are orthodox Jewish neighborhoods practically cheek to jowl with "gayborhoods." Often, there is marked diversity regarding views on women and sex stereotyping from one house or apartment to the next, and often within the very same household too.

What you said was totally different to observing and stating that some/many people in many/most different societies classify others according to sex stereotypes. You said a woman is a person of either sex who "identifies with" the inferior social standing and the sexist sex stereotypes associated with the female sex.

The phrase "identify with" used in this particular way is shorthand which means "classify oneself, base one's sense of self on, build one's self-concept around."

Your definition of woman completely ignores the fact that vast numbers of the world's female people do not classify ourselves, base our sense of self, build our self-concepts on the second-class social standing and on the sexist sex stereotypes associated with the female sex in various of the world's cultures. The fact is, many humans of the female sex do not accept, embrace, internalize and base our identities on our inferior social position and the sex stereotypes various cultures associate with and try to foist on us. We actively reject sex stereotypes and have spent our lives fighting to improve the second-class status of women in law and in virtually every area of life. Which according to you, means we are not and cannot be women and the word woman does not apply to us.

You told me point blank that in the classification system you use and you appear to believe is used pretty universally around the world, the name for a female adult who does not "identify with" the second-class social status and sex stereotypes her culture or any culture associates with the female sex would be either a man or a non-binary person.

I've yet to hear an argument for why it's sexist to recognise that society classifies people according to sexist stereotypes. That recognition is necessary to my feminism and to fighting back against those stereotypes

You're not fighting back agains sexist sex stereotypes, though. You're furthering them and inventing and imposing brand new ones. Moreover, the new sex stereotypes you're promulgating and cheerleading for and say are accepted pretty much universally around the world are incredibly misogynistic, demeaning and dehumanizing of adult human being who are females in particular. Women are not "identities" and being a woman is not based on feelings and ideas in our heads. Women are human beings of the female sex, and sex is about the material reality of biology, not identity. We are women because we have female bodies, not because we "identify with" the second-class status and sex stereotypes associated with the female sex that you say we all must "identify with" in order to be considered women.

Tellingly, you aren't spending any energy on redefining the word man in such as way as to reduce adult human males to sexist sex stereotypes and to rob adult human males of the right to call themselves men. All your time, attention and effort on this thread has been directed at redefining adult human females according to sex stereotypes for the purpose of making it appear that if we do not "identify with" the inferior social position and all the sex stereotypes associated with the female sex in various cultures, we aren't real women - we're not women at all.

Also, your belief system is not "feminism." It's the total opposite.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-04T19:38:16+00:00

So you think it's perfectly acceptable for you to keep telling women that the definition of the word for us - woman - is not an adult human female like all the dictionaries say and we keep pointing out, but rather that a woman is a person of either sex

who identifies with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex.

But when women who feel this definition of yours denigrates, dehumanizes and denies the biological reality and dignity of those of us who are adult human females, you throw your toys out of the pram and cry that our words are so mean as to be

beyond hurtful.

Wow. Talk about double standards. You really weren't kidding when you said that in your view the only way a woman can be a woman is if she "identifies with" and accepts the inferior social class and regressive sex stereotypes that sexists and misogynists associate with and continually try to foist upon the female sex.

You know, I am a person.

Adult human females are people/persons too. Why is it okay for you to keep hurling slings and arrows at women that denigrate and dehumanize us, but it's beyond the pale for us to voice objections to you denigrating and dehumanizing us?

How come you're the only person here whose feelings count? Indeed, why do you seem to think you're the only poster who has any feelings to begin with?

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-04T14:01:59+00:00

OMG, this is unbelievable. After spending days insisting that the definition of the word woman is not a human being who is adult and female, but rather that the word woman is defined in the peculiar way you personally have decided and decreed it to be defined, you say

I can't choose how words are defined.

Then in true Humpty Dumpty style, in practically the next breath you turn around and say

anyone who considers themself a woman is a woman in my book, as I have also repeatedly said.

Obviously, when you use the phrase "in my book," you must be referring to a niche title of recent vintage such as The Big Book of Gender Woo; Golden Book's Guide to Gender Gibberish; or The Front Hole Monologues (aka Andrea Long Chu's vile Females), not to any estimable, time-honored tome like Dr Johnson's landmark lexicon of the English language, or any other reputable dictionary of English such as the OED or other dictionaries published under the Oxford imprint.

https://public.oed.com/history/

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-04T13:31:31+00:00

Please stop trying to totally change the topic under discussion by coming up with silly hypotheticals. You didn't denigrate and dehumanize the momos of the world, FFS. You denigrated and dehumanized the half of the human race who are female and adult, past and present.

I'm not talking about a group of people called "women" and assigning the attribute of "identifying with a social class" to that group. I'm defining a term.

But that's you behaving like Humpty Dumpty again, issuing pronouncements from on high that the word woman means whatever the hell you personally say it means. And just as Humpty Dumpty did, when others tell you that no the word woman does not mean what you say it means, you respond by saying that we/they are in the wrong because we aren't as smart, sophisticated and privy to higher wisdom and the truth as you - and none of us knows how to read properly to boot.

The word woman has a longstanding, well-established, widely agreed-upon and universally understood definition already. A definition that is clear and simple: adult human female. It's not up to you to redefine the word woman in your own idiosyncratic way to reflect your own personal misogynistic and cockamamie beliefs, then issue edicts to others informing us that the whole world is wrong - the word woman does not actually mean an adult human female like everyone on earth except for regressive genderists believe, rather it means a person of either sex

who identifies with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex.

The issue with your definition of the word woman is not that it's unclear. It's that it's totally inaccurate and untrue. Moreover, the new definition you have given to the word and arrogantly are insisting that all the rest of us must accept as the correct definition is regressive, misogynistic and deeply insulting.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-04T12:53:04+00:00

I'd like to know why Fleurista is making that claim too. And also on what basis Fleurista believes it's fair and accurate to say that GC are guilty of

grouping all trans people together as being the same.

My perception is that GC are the one group that does the total opposite. GC constantly point out that "all trans people" are NOT the same and therefore should not be lumped together.

GC point out that "trans people" are either male or female, and there is a world of difference between trans people who are male and trans people who are female. GC also point out that the "gender affirming" medical treatments given to males and females who ID as trans have very different impacts on the mental health and mental wellbeing two groups, in large part because of the innumerable physical differences between the two sexes.

GC also point out that that males and females who identity as trans need to be further distinguished from one another not just by their sex, but by their age and the year/era they were born in; by the age and stage of development they were in when they first began to experience distress about sex and gender and an inclination to "identify as" the opposite; by their sexual orientation (when applicable); and by the range of experiences they went through growing up, with special attention to ACEs like child sex abuse, parental divorce, family conflict, bereavement, etc.

GC is the group that points out that girls whose distress over sex and gender and desire to be a boy/man suddenly crops up during puberty of adolescence are totally different to boys who felt a desire to be girls starting in early childhood long before puberty of adolescence - and that these two very distinct groups are vastly different in turn to the legions of males who develop "gender dysphoria" and decide to declare that they are girls/women in adolescence or adulthood principally because doing so brings them enormous male sexual pleasure.

GC are the ones who not only distinguish between two groups of adult and adolescent males who identity as trans like Blanchard did - the homosexual ones and the heterosexual ones with autogynephilia - we say that even amongst these two groups of males there are often marked differences in what is driving them to identity as the opposite sex, which have a lot to do with culture, ethnicity, and where they were born and grew up. GC point out that even within these two groups of adolescent and adult males, there are differences in the benefits, pleasures and seeming solutions to their overall life problems that identifying as girls/women brings them - and differences in the drawbacks and difficulties they experience from devoting their energies and time in, and investing so much of themselves in, the massive undertaking of trying to "live as" and "pass as" women/girls too.

GC is the group that further point out that just as "trans people" shouldn't be lumped together as if they were all one and the same, youngsters shouldn't be lumped together by use of such difference-erasing neologisms as "trans children" and "trans youth." GC are the group that keep pointing out that even when the "gender affirming treatment" prescribed, championed and sold as a panacea and magic cure for all "trans children" is the exact same thing - GnRH analogs aka "puberty blockers" - and it's administered at the same exact age, the treatment has radically different effects on male youngsters versus female youngsters. GC point out that when female children are put on "puberty blockers" for sex and gender distress, the blockers do not lead to improved body image, greater self-acceptance and less anxiety and depression. On the contrary, "puberty blockers" in gender and sex distressed females leads to a worsening of mental health in these specific regards - and to an increase in desire to/thoughts of self-harm, including suicide. Moreover, in females the use of GnRH analogs to block puberty results in permanently stunted height and dangerously low bone density, which in many cases results bone fractures, spinal deformity and degeneration, skeletons that cannot support the girls' bodies, and constant pain.

Seems to me that if anyone is guilty of "grouping all trans people together," it's not GC - rather, it's QT, TRAs, the legions of people who work in the gender vendor industry, and a great many individuals who identify as trans and mistakenly assume that others who identify as trans must be very much like themselves. IIRC, on this very sub Fleurista and other individual posters who call themselves "trans people" have been taken to task rather often by GC posters such as yours truly for not seeming to be aware of, or not paying enough heed to, the fact that many "trans people" are female, and for appearing not to take into account that the life experiences of many "trans people" are drastically different to their own personal life experience and the personal life experience of the small number of other "trans people" they personally know or know about too.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-03T19:06:46+00:00

I see your point about privacy, I guess I meant private in the sense of private Vs public. In that sense a private space is one that is shared by oneself and known others, and a public space is open to anyone. What do you feel privacy means in this context then?

But in countries like the USA, UK and Australia, public spaces like restrooms, clothes-changing rooms, fitting rooms, traditionally have not been "open to anyone." They have been segregated by sex.

This is to provide members of both sexes with privacy, dignity, personal comfort and convenience; and to provide female users with freedom from the male gaze, refuge from unwanted male sexual attention, prying and sexual harassment and advances from males; safety from male sexual assault and "plain" assault and battery by males; and escape from male stalkers and guys who might like to follow around girls and women.

But toilet provisions outside the home are also sex segregated to make these spaces more space- and resource-efficient, more hygienic for reasons of public health, and easier to clean. For example, urinals take up far less space than toilets and cubicles do, they use far less water less water, and can be kept clean with far less effort and less use of cleaning solutions and chemicals than flush toilets and cubles. When males pee standing up in toilets, they have very, very bad aim even in their own homes - and when males use toilets outside the home, they tend to pee all over the place - the seats, the floors, the backsplash, the side walls. Plus, the urine of adult and adolescent males usually has a stronger and worse smell than female urine does. In addition, tucking into the john for a wank is something a lot of teenage boys and men do when at work or at school or in other places outside the home - but this is not behavior females of any age customarily engage in. Finally, when using toilet facilities, the vast majority of males do not wash their hands, which means the door pulls and latches, toilet paper dispensers, paper towel dispensers, sink faucets, soap dispensers and surfaces in general in male communal loos are much more likely to be full of pathogens than female loos are. It's bad enough that men's restrooms are unsanitary; why should women's loos be made just as unsanitary by giving males access to them?

On the other hand, males do not customarily bleed from their genitals the way females do as a matter of course. But what could possibly be the reason for not keeping blood-soaked used menstrual products and the kinds of bloody discharge and blood clots that issue from female bodies contained to only one kind of restroom? Given what teenage boys and men with menstrual fetishes do with sanitary napkins and tampons, mixed-sex restrooms inevitably become hugely unhygienic messes, and they do so quickly. These spaces become so inhospitable for female users that girls and women don't want to or simply cannot use them. It never fails to happen that making restrooms "gender neutral" in the name of inclusivity ends up causing female users to self-exclude.

Another reason that multi-user toilet facilities outside the home are sex segregated is that it's against the religious beliefs and practices of Muslims and orthodox Jews of both sexes to share close, confined quarters - especially close confined spaces where intimate bodily matters like urination, defecation, menstruation and pregnancy are dealt with - and where ritual ablutions as before prayer are conducted too. Girls and women of these faiths in particular cannot use restrooms and other intimate facilities in the presence of men and boys. Forcing Muslim girls and women around the world into situations where unrelated and strange men could see their hair, get glimpses of their exposed skin as they change, or be privy to the fact that they are menstruating would cause them terrible distress and put them in real danger. Girls and women from many Muslim homes would be regarded as bringing shame on themselves and their families for "allowing" themselves to be in close proximity and viewed by males like that - and they'd be at risk of being beaten, confined to their homes or murdered in so-called "honor killings" as a result.

So it's about behaviour? Would you be ok with it then if you could be sufficiently sure that anyone behaving inappropriately would be able to be dealt with?

Why do you seem so keen on making members of the two sexes use toilet facilities and change rooms together? How exactly does this benefit girls and women? How does this benefit boys and men?

I have many male friends and relatives whom I am sure would never behave in a way that is sexually inappropriate, threatening or creepy to me. But for their dignity and privacy and mine I still don't want to have to use the same toilets and change rooms as them when we are out together. Nice as the guys I know are, I still don't think it's appropriate for my adult son, my adult brother, my ex FIL, the teenage boys who live next to me, or any of the men I am friends and colleagues with to change their clothes, shower or get their dicks out to urinate in the same spaces where they will be able to gaze at, listen to and discomfit girls and and women as we bare our bottoms to pee; dress and undress; change pads and products used for female bodily processes like menstruation, menopausal flooding, fibroid bleeding and clotting and bleeding after childbirth, termination or miscarriage; change breast pads and clean up leaks from our breasts; vomit due to pregnancy; or have miscarriages - something a lot of women go through, and usually go through when we are not in our own homes.

Please stop pretending human beings' desire and need for bodily privacy from members of the opposite sex in situations like communal toilets and change rooms is bizarre and beyond understanding. There's nothing peculiar or unreasonable about the fact that I do not want to have to get undressed in the company of my adult son, and I do not feel it's appropriate for me to accompany him into the men's facilities so I can see him use a urinal or take a shower. Even amongst close relatives like mother and son, bodily boundaries are healthy especially at certain ages/stages of life. It's one thing for a woman to breastfeed and be naked with her son when he's a baby or toddler, but it's a totally different situation once he is older.

Why do want to make it seem like anyone ever having any bodily boundaries is always a bad thing?

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-03T17:58:50+00:00

Can you give me one example of a thing that I said that was sexist?

a woman is a person who identifies with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-02T18:01:42+00:00

If we want there to be toilets for adult human females then we can make that the case, regardless of what word we are using to refer to them.

But none of us on the "GC" side have ever advocated for toilets solely for adult human females, nor would we. We advocate for sex-separate toilets for female humans of all ages. There is no reason to segregate by age in toilet provision. Moreover, most of us believe that it's reasonable and totally acceptable for baby boys and very young boys to be able to use toilets, change rooms, locker rooms, fitting rooms and shelters etc meant for women and girls when accompanied and in the care of their mothers, grans, sisters, female childcare workers.

Why would it be a loss of privacy to share a space with a trans woman but not with a non trans woman? It feels like "privacy" isn't really what you mean here. Any shared space is not private.

There you go again saying words have very different meanings to the meanings that are commonly understood by pretty much everyone else in society. How very Humpty Dumpty of you.

If it were true that "any shared space is not private," that would mean the only private homes are those inhabited by one and only one person. So no dwellings inhabited by families or roommates could be said to be private. No apartment buildings or bank of rowhouses could be said to be private or to contain private residences. And every person who lives alone would be said to no longer live in a private dwelling once he or she allows entry to guests, overnight visitors, cleaners or repair personnel. Similarly, there'd be no such things as private clubs, private schools, private property, private enterprise, the private sector, data privacy, medical privacy, private lives, private relations, privacy rights and so on.

I think you are confusing privacy with solitude. Contrary to what you claim, there are in fact a great many shared spaces that are private and offer all different kinds of privacy.

Moreover, there are many shared spaces which are used in ways that provide privacy to individuals, couples, families, small groups and select populations. For example, hotel rooms, voting booths, private dining rooms in restaurants, private lounges in public airports, private taxis/cars for hire.

When a couple shares a hotel room or takes a bath together, do really believe this makes the hotel room or bathroom they are in together not private? When a group of people gather for a hush-hush meeting behind closed doors to discuss matters they all have promised to keep in confidence, would you really say that the meeting was not private - and that everything said during it cannot possibly be called private because it was shared amongst the group?

Also, it's telling that in response to the statement that when males use spaces like women's restrooms

Women lose privacy, safety (real and perceived), and dignity.

You only commented on the privacy part. Are you conceding that women and girls (the female ones) lose safety and dignity when males use these spaces - or are you indicating that you don't care about the safety and dignity of women and girls (the female ones)?

The reason women and girls lose privacy, safety and dignity when "trans women" use women's communal restrooms and other female spaces is because "trans women" are males. As such, when they use women's restrooms, they behave very differently there to the way females behave.

https://youtu.be/zwUe7-4-_TY

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-01T21:01:36+00:00

When I talk about a "trans woman" I am using the word "trans" which is a shortened version of the adjective, "transgender". To smash the two words together like that invites exactly the kind of misunderstanding that you seem to have here, but I'll see if I can clarify.

When I talk about a "tall woman" I am not talking about an "adult human female of above average height", I am talking about a person who identifies as a woman who is above average height.

Similarly, when I talk about a "trans woman" I am talking about a person who identifies as a woman and whose gender identity is different from the one that they were assigned at birth. The word "trans" doesn't change the meaning of the word "woman" at all.

The way that you are using the word "woman" (aka adult human female) a "trans woman" would be an adult human female whose gender identity is different from the one that they were assigned at birth.

For two days now, those intentionally confusing strings of gibberish you wrote have been nagging at me. I knew I had heard something very much like them before, but I couldn't remember where. Today, it finally came to me. From Through The Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1871:

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously...

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. "They've a temper some of them- particularly verbs: they're the proudest- adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs- however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!"

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-01T19:29:46+00:00

Humans are not infallible, so yes sometimes it’s possible to missex someone. This tells us nothing about whether sex can be observed empirically . It most certainly can be, and over 99% of the time, we can clock someone at a glance without even thinking about it The shit is hardwired in us because of evolution. Anyone who doubts this hasn’t spent enough watching unneutered animals. If a male dog can sniff out a female in heat that is miles away, then its absurd to think human males can be easily fooled into thinking another male is actually the opposite sex just because of an identity claim.

It's especially absurd to think human females can be easily fooled into thinking a male is a female too. And it's cruel and sick for TIPs to expect girls and women to happily go along with their attempts to fool us about their sex, and their constant attempts to make us feel bad for caring about and being able to suss out other people's sex.

Fact is, for reasons of our own self-protection and the protection of our young, human females have developed an extremely sensitive, always switched-on "sixth sense" that enables us to size up and suss out the sex of others we come into contact with - particularly when those others are adolescents or older. It's part of being on the bottom of the food chain and the prey in the male-female/predator-prey relationship. Women and girls have to be hard-wired to be guard to protect ourselves personally from attack, impregnation and imprisonment against our will - and we have to be hardwired to be on guard to protect the offspring that are so often in the care of the world's women and girls, and all the unborn offspring that a good number of human females will be carrying within their wombs at any given time.

Much of women's natural alertness to sex and our ability to 'sniff it out" seems instinctual, but our instincts usually get sharpened after years and decades of "lived experience."

I've spent a lot of time around old women with a lot of sensory impairments - diminished sight, hearing, memory, cognition - in care homes and it's amazing how so many of them have an uncanny knack for instantly sensing with a high degree of accuracy when a male has come in their vicinity. The hazy outline of a body seen through blurry vision, the rough shape of the shadow they cast, the heaviness of their footfall, the manner of their gait, their obvious and imperceptible smells, etc - there are many cues and tells that even impaired women pick up subliminally and which cause the senses to go on alert and the hair on the back of the neck to stand up.

One of the big problems I have with the trans craze and the new trend of males radically altering their bodies so as to try to disguise their sex, and all the lying so many people are doing about their sex, is that it ultimately undermines the protective, sex-sensing instincts and abilities that girls and women have developed through evolution. Also, TRAs' claim that it's horribly impolite and bad form to recognize another person's sex turns an evolved strength that girls and women have into a drawback and a sign of rudeness. Plus, the constant claims that "you can never be sure" of another person's sex without doing a complete medical and genetic workup causes women and girls to doubt our perceptions and basic instincts. Which is an essential part of gaslighting.

This whole movement is about disempowering, shaming and disadvantaging women and girls in myriad ways.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-01T19:07:30+00:00

I see rubber has backtracked and is now saying something totally the opposite of what she or he originally said:

When I said that people cannot perceive sex what I meant was that there is no way to reliably know the sex of a person that is 100% accurate in all scenarios.

So we're supposed to believe that when rubber typed out "people cannot perceive sex" at all ever, what s/he really was saying is that every once in a while a situation will occur where someone doesn't correctly discern another person's sex - perhaps because the person being perceived has gone to great lengths to disguise his or her sex, or the perceiver has impaired or dulled senses and cognition.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-01T17:35:20+00:00

To add to your points: another reason humans are hard-wired to be able to tell the difference between adult and adolescent males and females - and to do so instantly without any conscious thought or effort - is because of how utterly dependent humans babies and children are on adults for their survival, and how unusually long the period of human development, helplessness and dependency lasts after birth.

Fact is, humans can tell the difference between men and women starting in early infancy, pretty much from the moment of birth. Babies naturally gravitate to women because instinctively they "know" women mean food, care and comfort.

It's telling that rubberdubberd00 is now acting all shocked and perplexed at the idea that human sex is something real that human beings can perceive, and perceive easily and quickly without any conscious thought. Coz two days ago s/he asserted that

Most people have an idea of their gender identity by the age of 2, it's not something that requires some special level of cognitive ability.

LOL. So according to rubber, no one can perceive sex in humans, but most people have a good enough grasp of sex stereotypes and QT by the age of 2 to have "an idea of their gender identity" by then.

I've come to the conclusion that rubber is trolling. Because nobody can be this contradictory and disingenuous without it being intentional.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-01T16:56:41+00:00

No, it doesn't make sense. Sorry if I misinterpreted your words. Can you explain what this sentence means:

If one doesn't 'pass', then transphobia via Gender Critical-ism is because of reinforcing and (being seen as) dehumanizing members of the opposite sex, trivializing what it means to be a member of that sex

I honestly don't get what "transphobia via Gender Critical-ism" is. Can you give some examples please.

And please explain how "transphobia via Gender Critical-ism" results in

reinforcing and (being seen as) dehumanizing members of the opposite sex, trivializing what it means to be a member of that sex

BTW, I don't deny that some GC people can be mean and make cutting remarks about the clothes, grooming, hairstyles, etc of some trans people. But you've got to admit that a lot of trans people seem to be "taking the piss" as they say in Britain. Such as all the men with beards claiming to be trans women nowadays. And all the males clearly using their special status as members of the new sacred caste to trample all over women and our basic civil rights. To wit: Danielle Muscato, Jessica Yaniv, Lia Thomas, Ricci Tres, Eddie Izzard... Not to mention all the convicted rapists of women, child molesters and murderers of women and children.

You mention people who are

being refused employment on the basis of ‘being trans’.

Please give some RL examples of this actually happening. I know people with trans identities complain a lot that no one will hire them. Maybe so. But is it because they are trans - or because of some other reason? Or reasons? For example, trans lobby orgs report that more than 60% of "black trans women" in the US today have criminal convictions that caused them to be sentenced to time behind bars (these convictions are not for doing "sex work"). The CDC reports that "black trans women" in the US have a very high rate of HIV infections (in the range of 50%) and most who get their HIV diagnosed are noncompliant with medical care to keep their HIV in check. So if it's hard for many of them to get hired, it might be because they have limited work histories and blemished records.

Also, unfortunately trans people have already gotten a reputation for making unreasonable demands in the workplace, and for filing a lot of HR grievances and lawsuits. When women entered the workforce in large numbers in the 1960s and 70s, women took the opposite tack. We learned to put up with a lot of crap without filing grievances or lawsuits in part because we didn't want to give men any reason to complain that we're difficult to work with.

All that said, it seems "being trans" today is considered an asset in the eyes of many employers that leads to more and better job opportunities. Caitlyn Jenner got hired by FOX News coz Jenner is trans. Rachel Levine got a cabinet post for being trans. Jennifer Finney Boylan has made a whole stellar career out of being trans. Lots of trans people seem today seem to be handed employment opportunities on a silver platter. Hiring someone trans garners employers points in terms of the DEI stats and PR.

Moreover, a number of major corporations now are providing benefits, accommodations and perks for trans people on an order and scale not matched by the benefits, accommodations and perks that any other marginalized group gets. For example, many companies now give trans employees extensive leave for, and cash payments to cover, a host of "gender affirming" cosmetic surgeries - on top of the sick leave and regular benefits that all employees get.

By contrast, women working for these same companies don't get special time off or extra funds to help us deal with issues like menstrual cramps, PMDD, flooding from uterine bleeding and clotting, miscarriage or termination, or for tummy tucks and breast lifts after pregnancies. Some of the same companies that are bending over backwards to fund and support "gender affirming" cosmetic procedures don't even give female employees much or anything in the way of decent paid maternity leave after giving birth. Similarly, though women have been begging for accommodations in the workplace when going through menopause, most companies have told female employees to suck it up. Most workplaces also still make no accommodations to make it easier, safer and more hygienic for breastfeeding women to express and store milk during their shifts.

So the issue is: are trans people really suffering huge amounts of workplace discrimination like they constantly say? Or is this just another area where the extent of "oppression coz trans" has been greatly exagerrated - indeed, largely invented? When trans people claim they are discriminated against like no other group is or has ever been discriminated against, I always wonder: who have they spoken to? Who are they comparing themselves to? Do they know any women, people from racial and linguistic minorities, older people past 50, or people with disabilities, etc who truly have suffered employment discrimination because of immutable physical characteristics?

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-01T16:21:27+00:00

But what exactly does a male who believes he "experiences the world being perceived by most everyone as a woman" really have in common with women (female adults)?

That is what he has in common with women: he experiences the world being perceived by most everyone as a woman. The significance of that is debatable, of course!

You left out a phrase I was careful to insert, though. You seem to take it for granted that the hypothetical male in this case more likely than not truly "experiences the world being perceived by most everyone as a woman." Whereas I suspect it's more likely than not that his own perceptions of how he is being "read" by others are inaccurate. I think he might believe and claim that he "experiences the world being perceived by most everyone as a woman." But I have a hunch the vast majority of males in this situation are not really perceived as women by nearly as many other people in as many different situations as often or as genuinely as they believe.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-01T16:12:36+00:00

We maybe shouldn't ascribe so much meaning or give so much power to expectations regarding clothing, grooming, hairstyles, etc. but people still do. People are discriminated against or treated with prejudice because of such things, which does need some sort of recognition, or else oppression based on stereotypes

Can you give some concrete examples of people who in this day and age are being discriminated against and treated with prejudice in ways that are clearly unlawful - or should be unlawful - in workplaces, schools or commercial establishments because their "clothing, grooming, hairstyles" don't conform to sex stereotypes?

Please cite specific examples of people who due to having clothing, grooming and/or hairstyles that aren't in line with sex stereotypes were refused service in a bar or restaurant or store; were denied admission to schools and entertainment venues; were denied the right to participate in sports; were turned down for a mortgage or other bank loan or service; were turned away from a hospital or urgent care when seeking basic health care; were not allowed to board a commercial airliner or use other public transport... and so on.

I have a strong sense that a lot of people who identify as trans or have some other kind of special gender identities these days felt shamed, bullied and mistreated by family members, school mates and neighborhood bullies when they were growing up - and as adults they take these experiences and use them as the template that shapes their view of, and approach to, the whole world beyond their homes, home towns and school play grounds. I have a feeling that many trans people also take the difficulties they experience in the dating realm and in their relationships with certain family members and friends and project them onto everyone they encounter in every sphere of life. They assume they will face the exact same difficulties, judgments and rejection they got from their mom or dad, and the cold shoulders they got from their teenage crushes, with every one else in the world they encounter. When the reality is, the big outside world often is very different than people imagine it to be. Most people we encounter don't spend time thinking ill of us - most people don't spend any time thinking about us at all.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-01T15:29:25+00:00

I have absolutely no idea exactly what males mean when they say they "identify as" women - or what females mean when they say they "identify as" men either. I think you're in a far better position to tell me what this means than the other way around. Not because you personally say you "identify as" a woman - I dunno how you describe yourself - but because I think you have a far better understanding than I do of what it's like to be a person who wishes to be the opposite sex, and specifically what it feels like to be someone male who long has sought - and still seeks? - to be perceived as or like a woman in other people's eyes.

Phrases such as "identify as a woman," "she/he identifies as women" or "Lia Thomas identifies as a woman" are not strings of words I have invented, or that I personally use or would ever use. But believers and peddlers of gender ideology have been saying for years that "a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman" and therefore a male person can be just as much a woman as his mother and grand mothers. And increasingly they say this works the other way around too: "a man is anyone who identifies as a man." (Though I think most of the world is less likely to play along with that fiction than with the fiction that males like Rachel Levine, Char Clymer and Lia Thomas are women just coz they say the magic words "I identify as a woman.")

I personally don't have a gender identity, and the whole idea of people "identifying as" things they/we are not seems ludicrous to me - whether the something they/we are not is a sex, a chronological age, a sexual orientation, a member of political party, a resident of certain country/state/region/city, a practioner of a certain profession or hobby, etc. The nomenclature to "identify as" in a personal sense is totally alien and makes no sense to me.

As I've written here before, the concept of "self identifying" originally referred to colonized, oppressed and marginalized peoples - not to individual persons. Black people in the US came to reject the label "Negro" and instead chose to self-identify as African American or black - and later some would chose to identify as ADOS or POC. In the 1960s and 70s, female adults in workplaces rejected being called "girls" and "working girls" and said we/they wanted be known as women. Similarly, women who worked as administrative assistants aka secretaries, office managers and typists asked not to be referred to by such terms as "my girl," "his girl" or "the office girls" or "the girls." And women attending college/uni said we'd prefer not to be called "co-eds" any more.

But those were group labels. It's only been very recently in history that promoters of gender identity ideology, individual identity politics and the PoMo idea that "people are whatever they say they are" have begun using the concept of self-identity to mean that anyone can pick and choose whatever labels for themselves willy-nilly and to insist that no matter how preposterous and reality-denying some people's claimed self-identities are, they all must be taken seriously, respected, affirmed and seen as "valid" by everyone else in the world. Except, that is, if the person claiming a certain identity is a white woman like Rachel Dolezal.

Using our statements to frame us as males who "identify as" women/girls and then to extrapolate from that framing seems a bit assumptive and misleading.

Then explain what you mean, then. I'm all ears.

BTW, I totally do understand how people can have self-images and body-images in our heads and hearts that stand in stark contrast to who, how and what we actually are in objective reality. When I was a teenager and young woman I saw my own body as fat and ugly when I was actually quite slim and attractive. After I finally came to see my body more realistically, and with self-acceptance and even pride and love, I had a hard time dealing with the marked physical changes that pregnancy and childbirth brought. Now that I am old, I have reached the stage in life where I really don't recognize myself in the mirror any more. In my mind and heart, I still "feel young" in many respects, but my bones and joints don't feel very young - and when I glance in a looking glass, what I see is an old woman who bears little/no resemblance to the woman I once was.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-01T13:37:03+00:00

Oh c'mon, now you're just playing games. Pretending that you haven't said the absurd, incredibly sexist, misogynistic things you've said in multiple posts throughout this thread and putting on a faux naive act. You probably opened your eyes real wide, put a hand to your chest and made a point of batting your eyelashes in an OTT, theatrical way meant to denote feigned innocence and ignorance when you typed

I don't know what "genderism" is supposed to be

What sexist, misogynistic ideology is that?

The only thing you forgot is the UwU.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-01T13:17:46+00:00

No one has the right (or, indeed, the ability) to redefine words to suit their interests.

LOL, except throughout this thread you've been redefining words - particularly the word woman - to suit your interests and the interests of other gender vendors. I and many posters have repeatedly told you that since the word woman was invented, the universally agreed-upon definition has been that woman is a human being who is female. To wit:

The female of the human race.

https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search.php?term=woman

An adult female human being

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

An adult female human

https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/woman

But you keep insisting that everyone from Samuel Johnson to the OED to medical science are dead wrong. You keep saying that a woman can be either sex, because to you a woman is merely a chosen "identity" that has nothing to do with having a female body. You explicitly deny that the word woman refers to sex or can be connected to a person's physical sex:

If you interpret any statement that I have made about the word "woman" to be using it to refer to sex you are misunderstanding my intent.

In fact, to you it's actually easier for a misogynistic, sexist male with a sick male sexual fetish, mean male masturbation habit who has fathered children to be a woman than it is for feminist female who rejects sexist genderism to be a woman. According to you, females who reject genderism can't be women even if we have experienced pregnancy and given birth to children - but males who've fathered children like Jan Morris, Rachel Levine, Jennifer Finney-Boylan, C Jenner and oodles more, they're all women! Because according to you, being a woman has nothing whatsoever to do with biology, it's entirely based on believing in the sexist, misogynistic ideology you believe in and accepting and embracing a second-class social status:

a woman is a person who identifies with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-07-01T00:53:07+00:00

This is such a weird way of thinking about it. Is this something you think motivates males to transition or is it something that motivated you? I’ve heard hatred towards men or maleness from people like Derrple and others a lot, but I don’t relate to that.

A lot of males who are heterosexual and bisexual say their urge to be women isn't rooted in autogynephilia, but rather stems from a desire to disassociate themselves from having anything to do with the male sex. I've personally heard this cited by quite a few teenagers and young adult males who've gotten caught up in trans mania in the past several years... But I've also heard it from much older ones too. But their experience will be very different to yours because they are NOT homosexual, and they did not have early-childhood-onset GD the way it sounds like you did.

For example, the very thoughtful detransitioning YouTuber Sam - who used to go by the name Maya - is in his 50s, but he has always maintained that he transitioned to escape maleness and masculinity, which he says he has only negative associations with. (A claim I doubt because other things Sam says make it clear he is very favorably inclined towards a lot of the men he tells anecdotes about - as does the way he behaves with the other men he's had convos with in YT videos, all of whom have similar gender identities and "trans histories" as Sam.) Interestingly, Sam, who grew up subjected to violent abuse by his father, turned to toxic and violent masculinity himself by joining a male criminal gang in his youth.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-30T23:59:19+00:00

One more thing. Can you please explain what you mean here:

If one doesn't 'pass', then transphobia via Gender Critical-ism is because of reinforcing and (being seen as) dehumanizing members of the opposite sex, trivializing what it means to be a member of that sex

Because it comes off as though you are saying females are the ones guilty of dehumanizing males, not the other way around, and that we are the ones who are trivializing what it means to be a member of the opposite/male sex. Which sure sounds like DARVO straight out of the MRA playbook. Talk about pot calling the kettle black!

the transphobia a person who 'passes' would more likely experience would be due to a person's or group of peoples' discomfort with someone not behaving or appearing as one would expect a member of their sex to behave and appear.

People of both sexes have been defying sex stereotypes for generations - all without experiencing any "transphobia." *

Chances are, what you perceive as other people's discomfort and choose to call "transphobia" is just projections of your own feelings of discomfort stemming from your own judgments. You might believe that most people experience "discomfort with someone not behaving or appearing as one would expect a member of the their sex to behave and appear" because you yourself have rigid expectations of how others should behave and appear and you are preoccupied with how others appear and behave - and you assume everyone else shares your rigid expectations and preoccupations and is always looking at you and judging you too. But this is not true. The people who have rigid expectations and are hung up on looks and masculinity and femininity and are always going around judging themselves and others based on superficial aspects of dress, appearance and affect are the genderists, not the general public.

In a country like the USA or UK, most people don't pay much attention to how the other people we see out and about dress and behave. And so long as people are not impinging on on the rights of others, breaking laws, making trouble, encroaching where they don't belong, or creating safeguarding concerns, no one much cares about the way others dress and behave.

GC women aren't discomforted by males not adhering to sex stereotypes. What we are discomfited by is males reducing us to cardboard stereotypes, telling us they/you ARE us, and mimicking us in dehumanizing ways for entertainment as in drag, for claimed reasons of "identity" that they demand we play along with and show respect for - or else - as in trans, and for their own sexual fetishes and sick male fantasies. What we are very distressed by are the claims that genderists make, namely that not adhering to the sex stereotypes of one's own sex means a person effectively turns into the opposite sex - and, worse, that males who don't conform to the sex stereotypes for their sex now have a right to horn in on female sports and on the spaces and services meant for female people, such as women's and girls' locker rooms, loos, changing rooms, showers, shelters, dorm rooms, rape crisis centers, prisons, support groups.

*A case in point: this longtime "gender bender" is now constantly called a transphobe by genderists because he says humans can dress and express ourselves however we want, but none of us can change sex: https://youtu.be/2GbgPd3hPSc

In 2022, Marilyn - who now goes by the name Mister Marilyn - is still dressing as behaving as he wants, and no one cares or gives him grief, not even his GC feminist fans like me. Because Mr Marilyn doesn't pretend that his fondness for skirts, makeup and long hair makes him a woman. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WgO7jVltslQ

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/K-nE5qF4YjU

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-30T19:19:39+00:00

If a male experiences the world being perceived by most everyone as a woman, why would they feel they have more in common with trans people rather than women?

But what exactly does a male who believes he "experiences the world being perceived by most everyone as a woman" really have in common with women (female adults)?

I know males in this position typically say, often insistently, that they "feel they have more in common with" female people than with other males like themselves. But I don't get what this feeling is actually based on. To me, it seems a like an expression of distinctly male wishful thinking and a projection of distinctly male fantasies that come from the distinctly male belief that women are whatever males imagine us to be and say we are.

Seems to me that males who call themselves "transsexuals" could only "feel they have more in common with women" than with other males who adopt some other kind of trans gender identities if they believe women are superficial, passive beings who have no existence apart from the way others perceive us and treat us. It seems based on the belief that we have no inner lives, no depth, no self-consciousness of inhabiting our own bodies, no sensations of our own that come from our distinctly female bodies, and no "lived experience" of going through uniquely female physical processes like menstruation, uterine cramping, PMDD/PMS, ovulation, conception, pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, abortion, menopause, gynecological disease, breastfeeding, tokophobia and so on.

It seems based on the belief that women are merely surfaces, objects or "dumb" animals with no material reality apart from the way others perceive, assess, touch, handle, regard and treat us.

I feel like that experience is ignored, downplayed, and/or met with hostility by the majority of trans people (who are not transsexuals) because they cannot comprehend that experience themselves, and there is resentment towards transsexuals like this.

But I and many other women feel that males who describe themselves as transsexuals AND transgender alike all completely overlook, ignore, downplay our experience as female humans beings and treat US with hostility and resentment. Because you/they cannot comprehend OUR own experience. Many refuse to even acknowledge that we have any inner experience whatsoever that is separate and unique and which males cannot appropriate or simulate.

Most trans peoples' experiences are not those of transsexuals', so they take the interpretation of their own experience and apply it to transsexuals, then claim that they have the same experience because they don't pass yet they feel they are or should be another sex or gender, so the feeling of dissatisfaction one has with their sex/gender/role is interpreted as being the same, when it really isn't.

But just because the "transsexual" males you are describing here don't have the same experiences as "most trans people" doesn't mean that the life experience and experience of self of those male "transsexuals" can be assumed to be the same as - or to have any relationship to - the life experience and experience of self of actual women (female people) either.

It seems to me that you keep taking the experience of male "transsexuals" like yourself and projecting it on to those of us who are female in order to make it appear as though your experience as a specific subset of male human beings is essentially the same as the experience of the world's female people - or at least very, very close. When from my perspective, there's a universe of difference so vast that our experiences are basically chalk and cheese.

That doesn't mean I think the experience of male "transsexuals" is worse - or better - than the experience of female people, or vice versa. I just don't think these very different groups of human beings have very much in common and should be lumped together.

Moreover, I resent the way that males with various kinds of "trans" identities continually use factors like the amount of body alterations they have done and their beliefs that they "pass" as the opposite sex so much better than other males with trans identities do as excuses to keep sidling up to the sex divide and insisting in wheedling, manipulative ways that because they are not like those other blokes over there, they with their "special transsexual" trans status have "earned the right" to shoehorn and insinuate themselves into the female category. It all feels like forced teaming to me.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-30T16:06:50+00:00

It's interesting to me that peakingatthemoment said:

If a male alters their body and is able to pass to people as female they are going to exist in society being treated as a female in most ways

And now Fleurista has said:

If a male experiences the world being perceived by most everyone as a woman, why would they feel they have more in common with trans people rather than women?

To me, these statements illustrate a major difference between the self-concepts of males who "identify as" women/girls and those of us who actually are women/girls. There's a lot more to going through life as a female human being in a female body than just being perceived and treated in certain ways by others.

I honestly don't know anyone female who derives her own sense of her sex solely or mainly from how others perceive her. Even if a female person lives a totally cloistered and solitary life as a hermit or shut-in who never leaves the house, or she only leaves the house covered head to toe face and all in a full-body burka like in Afghanistan, or she looks very "butch" and thus often gets mistaken for a male person by others when out and about in the world, she will still inhabit a body that is distinctly female in the thousands of ways that make human female bodies very different to human male bodies. And in my observation, what inhabiting a distinctly, unmistakably female body feels like to her internally in her own flesh and blood down to the marrow of her bones will be the major source of information that she relies for her knowledge that she is a woman or girl.

I think if those who believe women's self-concepts of sex is entirely or mostly about the perceptions other people have about us actually spent time speaking to a broad cross section women about this, they'd find that women's sense of being female usually has as much or FAR MORE to do with the physical aspects of our bodies that we experience and feel in every fiber of our being internally rather than how other people who observe us from the outside see and treat us.

Yes, the ways other people see and treat us shape and inform our self-concepts. But it is only part of the story of our sense of ourselves and especially our sense of our sex. For many of us, how others see and treat us is actually only a small part of the story insofar as our sense of our own female sex is concerned.

For many of us, our sense of ourselves as girls and women comes largely or even mostly from the physical issues we start dealing with once we start getting periods - which the majority of females start at 11-12 - and breast development, which most girls start even earlier. PMDD, menstrual cramps, heavy bleeding and clotting, period blood leaking all over, pre-menstrual breast tenderness, ovulation twinges/pain, female urethral problems like recurrent cystitis, vaginal yeast overgrowth aka "infections" when under stress, our vulnerability to pregnancy and all the intense worries and dread that come with that, pregnancy, miscarriage, termination, childbirth, breastfeeding, ovarian cysts, fibroids, uteruses perforated by IUDs, a lifetime of breast cancer checks and worries about various kinds of lumps, menopause, osteoporosis, gynecological disease, hysterectomy, bones that are easier to break than male bones, skulls that make us more susceptible to concussion and TBIs than males are, muscles and reflexes that make us slower and less physically powerful than males, female grip strength, a far greater likelihood of experiencing autoimmune diseases and Alzheimer's, a far greater risk of suffering lower limb injuries than males due to doing sports and wearing high heels, etc - these are the kinds of embodied, "lived experiences" that most female human beings rely on for the knowledge we are girls and women.

Catcalls, being groped, being ignored, being sexually preyed upon, getting talked over, getting called "miss" and "ma'am," being mansplained to, being told to swallow your feelings, being passed over for promotion at work, having your ideas stolen from you and credited to someone else, having your health complaints dismissed by doctors, being told you don't matter, being called a slxt, whxre, Karen, pearl clutcher, fat cow, stupid breeder, ugly mxnhater, old bag, a witch and TERF and so on - those sorts of experiences are reminders that we are female, and that in our society females are seen as second-class and second-rate. But for most of us, those kinds of experiences are not where our basic knowledge that we are female comes from. Most of us get our fundamental sense of our selves as female human beings, as girls and women, from a lifetime of inhabiting female bodies every second of every day, year in and year out - not from how others see us and treat us. Nor even from what we ourselves see when we look in glass mirrors.

The embodied experience of being a female human being with female DNA, female cells, female organs, a female immune response and so on is fundamentally different to, and totally separate from, how other people perceive us and how they treat us. It's entirely different to gazing at our physical selves in looking glasses too. These are points which seem totally lost on those who believe that being a girl/woman is simply - and mainly, mostly, entirely - a matter of giving off a certain outward impressions and being viewed and treated by others in particular ways.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-30T12:47:28+00:00

If you had been born male, and you felt unable to get the rest of the male community to behave better, wouldn't you be ashamed and embarrassed too? Possibly to the point of wanting to hide it or make it ambiguous?

The premise here is that males who attempt to hide their sex or make it appear more ambiguous by getting on the trans train - or by adopting a non-binary or other newfangled gender identity - all only do so after spending years devoting a great deal of their time, energy and effort into trying "to get the rest of t the male community to behave better." I believe this is a false, totally unfounded premise.

My observation is that males who've gotten on the gender identity bandwagon and identity as other than their sex generally have absolutely NO history of spending any time or energy whatsoever engaged in trying "to get the male community to behave better." This is true whether they are homosexuals who were or felt bullied and shamed for being insufficiently "manly" in their formative years, or they are heterosexual autogynephiles.

Sure, some might have attended an anti-war protest or BLM rally and used online hashtags protesting some kinds of male violence, such as police shootings... But none of them seem ever to have spent any time and energy whatsoever seriously trying "to get the rest of the male community to behavior better" in any way or any context.

In fact, prior to announcing that they are not men, a lot of males who say they "identify as" trans or non-binary engaged in a host of behaviors emblematic of "toxic masculinity" in its traditional forms. A majority of the MA and older heterosexual autogynephiles devoted their lives prior to "transition" to "manly" pursuits: trying to become top dog in boys' and men's sports; serving as soldiers and officers in all-male or almost entirely male military outfits; spending their every waking hour in the company of other males as they sought career success in male-dominated fields like IT, business, medicine, technology, journalism, academic philosophy; fathering children; "ruling the roost" and playing "king of the castle" at home; consuming pornography and exchanging porn with other blokes; chasing and sexually harassing women; and pursuing their own sexual pleasure and other selfish interests with no concern for the impact of their behaviors on others, such as their wives, children, their own mothers and sisters, and the female members of the communities they reside in and interact with.

A considerable portion of the younger heterosexual males who have gone trans today seem to have previously been openly and proudly misogynistic MRAs and incels who themselves have long behaved in abusive and bullying ways to others, especially women and girls (starting with their mothers and sisters). Some were neo-Nazis. Many are blatantly racist.

As for the homosexual ones, my impression is that - again generally speaking - most of them are way too wrapped up in themselves, too obsessed with their appearance, too steeped in the sex stereotypes they are enthralled with, and too preoccupied with activities like trying to look and act "girly," trying to attract and bed men, playing the victim and whining and complaining about how oppressed and vulnerable they are, and intruding upon and demonizing female people - whilst simultaneously expressing envy, covetousness and ire towards us - for any of them to ever have lifted a single solitary finger in an effort to try "to get other males to behave better."

In fact, my impression of males who say they want to become women because they loathe men and don't want to be associated with men is that it's never occurred to any of them to try to get other males to behave better - either to males like themselves or to members of the female sex. Which is why these males direct their demands for kindness, acceptance and "inclusion" almost exclusively at women and girls, and they have expectations of women and girls they'd never dare have of other males.

Regardless of their sexual orientation, the vast majority of males who have adopted trans or non-binary identities supposedly to escape being men and being associated with men seem to take it as a given that female humans must be forced to sacrifice our rights, spaces, sports, safety, privacy, dignity, comfort, convenience, mental wellbeing and self-esteem to make them and other males with similar gender identities feel good about themselves and feel safe and "at home" in the world - but they do not place any similar or equivalent expectations and demands on other males.

If anyone can provide examples which show that most males who now identify as trans or NB only adopted those identities after previously devoting their lives to trying "to get the rest of the male community to behave better" but found their efforts were in vain, please do. I will then edit or withdraw this post and admit my impressions are wrong.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-29T15:30:21+00:00

I guess that the reason that this doesn't seem contradictory to me is that I don't really see identifying as a woman as a way of being. It's not got anything to do with how a person acts,

I never said that being a woman has "anything to do with how a person acts," though. Nor would I ever make such a claim.

My view is that being a woman depends on three things: being human, a member of the species Homo sapiens; being female; and being of adult age (18 or over). Consciousness and acting/behaving in any particular way or doing anything are not necessary. To me, an adult human female in a coma, under anesthesia, with severe brain injury, in a state of catatonia or without the ability to see, hear, speak or move is as much as woman as any other adult human female.

I have been close to a number of adult human females as they died of various illnesses that caused them to lose their minds and be totally incapable of acting any which way. Several could not move at all. Yet to me and everyone else around them, they were still women. When they died, their bodies were the dead bodies of women. You are the one who says this can't be true, because you keep insisting that there is no way to be a woman without being conscious and "all there" mentally enough to engage in the cognitive processes required to "identify" and think of one's self as woman:

we conceptualise identifying as a woman in entirely different ways.

No, the fundamental difference is that you equate being a woman with "identifying as a woman" and I don't.

You say

identifying as a woman is basically just thinking "I am a woman".

I say an adult human female is a woman even if she can't "identify" or frame the thought "I am a woman" in her mind - even if she can't think at all. I believe that being a woman doesn't involve engaging in any kind of cognition, self-reflection or thought processes - or having any sense of "identity."

I believe that the word woman simply describes the physical reality of a kind of human body. You think woman refers to gender identity, that being a woman is simply a way of thinking about the self - a way of thinking about the self that can be engaged in by adult human males as well as adult human females.

I have no beef with you and other people having a gender identity. Just like I have no beef with people who believe they have souls. My beef is with you insisting that everyone else on earth has a gender identity. I am challenging the way you and other genderists project your own inner mental processes, your own preoccupations, and your own very particular way of constructing your own sense of self onto everyone else in the world. You keep saying that woman refers to a way of thinking about the self that you apparently believe is universal - when in fact, it's a way of thinking about the self that is specific only to some people on earth.

I am not telling you not to have a gender identity. I am pointing out that not everyone on earth has a gender identity, and not everyone else believes in gender identity ideology. Some people think gender ideology is a load of sexist, misogynistic, regressive shite, in fact.

I am also asking you to please stop insisting that everyone else must construct our sense of self the way you and other genderists do.

To me, identifying as a woman is basically just thinking "I am a woman". Of course there will be some neurological conditions that make this impossible, but it wouldn't be as common as you seem to think.

How common do these sorts of neurological conditions have to be for you to recognize adult human females with said conditions as women?

As I said before, there are more than 4 million adult human females in the US alone with Alzheimer's. In Australia, there are nearly a quarter of a million adult human females with AD, and dementia is the single largest cause of death for adult human females in OZ. Why cannot you grant full humanity to adult females who don't have the same mental faculties as you? Why sneer that in your view neurological conditions that make gender identity impossible are too rare for the inner lives of people with such conditions to be considered worthy of consideration?

Also, even if it were true that only a very few people are affected by neurological conditions that make it impossible to have a gender identity, why don't they matter in the genderist/QT world view? Why do the tiny percentage of people marginalized because of their gender identities deserve sympathy and respect in your view, but people with neurological conditions get dismissed as irrelevant and unimportant? Where do you get off dictating that just because people have conditions that you believe are "not as common as you seem to think," they don't count and shouldn't be referred to as women, men, boys or girls?

Maybe if you spent some time in a nursing/care home where people with Alzheimer's reside, a hospice where people are living out their dying days, or in the company of some adult human females born with severe mental disabilities, you'd have a broader view of who counts as women. Maybe then you'd find it in your heart to be bit more charitable to the many millions of people on earth who don't have the capacity to engage in the mental processes that are required to "identify as a woman" and necessary for "basically just thinking 'I am a woman'."

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-29T14:16:00+00:00

If a person considers that they are a woman because they are an adult human female, I would consider that to be identifying as a woman.

Again, what about all the adult females past and present who cannot and could not "consider" these matters because of mental impairments that make it impossible for them to grasp, reflect on and think about their sex, age, species, social status and "identities"? There are quite a few of them around. What about all the adult human females in comas?

It's incredibly ableist of you to keep insisting that being a woman is totally dependent on having fully-developed adult consciousness, cognitive capacities and powers of reasoning - AND also on having the very particular kind of SELF-consciousness that you and some others in today's world have.

You are assuming that the way current-day genderists with full mental faculties who inhabit materially-abundant environments full of mirror glass and surrounded by human-made imagery in certain Western cultures experience and conceptualize yourselves and construct your own self-concepts are the universal ways that all human beings everywhere on earth experience and conceptualize them/ourselves and construct our own self-concepts. This is not true, and believing and insisting that it must be true is cultural imperialism.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-29T13:40:16+00:00

If you want to use women to refer only to adult human females then go ahead

Gee thanks, boss. It's so magnanimous and really big of you to deign to allow the adult human females of the world to use the word that describes us to a T.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-29T13:32:22+00:00

Again, you didn't answer any of my questions.

I don't think there's anything wrong with referring to someone as a woman without having had their identity explicitly stated.

Huh? Earlier you said that any/all adult human females who don't explicitly "identify with" the second-class social status and sexist stereotypes associated with the female sex in various cultures cannot be considered or called women, and that instead we would have to be considered "men or non-binary people."

It's not dictatorial to refer to people by the language that they personally prefer.

But that's not what you are doing. You have been saying throughout this thread that unless someone states that they "identify as" a woman, which to you means accepting and embracing second-class social status and a host of demeaning sex stereotypes - and unless you personally have knowledge of this - they/we cannot be considered or called women. Instead, they/we must be called men or non-binary.

Most of us will meet and get to know only a very tiny sliver of the world's population, and most of us know only one or two or at most a few of the world's more than 7,000 different languages and dialects. So how can you know what term that everyone on earth "personally prefers" for themselves?

The half of the population in Afghanistan who aren't allowed out of the house unless fully covered from head to toe in portable cloth prisons - what word would you call them? How is it respectful to claim that they are not women because you personally don't know how each and every one of them "identifies" and because like most English-speakers, you probably don't know any of the words in their languages? How is it not dictatorial to proclaim that because you and a lot of other people on earth personally do not know the words for women in Dari and Pashto, it means there is no word in English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic etc that can be respectfully used for the adult female population of Afghanistan?

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-29T12:45:17+00:00

I believe that any person that identifies as a woman is a woman. There is no correct way to be a woman.

To my view, those two statements totally contradict one another.

If there is "no correct way to be a woman," then how can it be that the only way to be a woman is to "identify as" a woman or claim to "identify as" a woman?

How can it be that there is "no correct way to be a woman" when you yourself have said on this thread that being a woman means "identifying with" the second-class social status and misogynistic stereotypes that misogynists and sexists for millennia have associated with humans of the female sex?

According to you, all the adult human males who today claim to "identify as" women are women, but the millions of adult human females on earth today who have Alzheimer's or other neurological conditions that make it impossible for them to "identify as" anything are not women.

According to you, all the adult males convicted of using their dicks and male power, strength and aggression to rape females who now say they "identify as women" are women, but none of their adult female victims can be women unless those female victims conceptualize themselves exactly as you and other males who claim to "identify as women" say adult human females must see ourselves in order to be considered women.

According to you, all the adult males who have fathered children who now say they are women are women, but none of the female people who bore and gave birth to any of the oodles of children fathered by men who claim to "identify as" women can be considered women unless they do as you command and "identify with" the second-class social status and sex stereotypes that misogynists associate with humans of the female sex.

According to you, the only people on earth who are women are those who have heard of, fully understood and decided to ascribe to, the cockamamie PoMo theories that you mistakenly seem to think are universally-held. Such as the theory that "people are whatever they say they are;" the theory that words like "women" have no collectively agreed-upon meaning; and that the theory the material reality of human beings' biological sex does not matter - all that matters are the claimed "identities" that some very privileged people with luxury beliefs claim to possess.

I have a hunch that you think I am not engaging honestly because I am truthfully telling you how offensive, imperialistic, arrogant and dictatorial your views come off to me and to many others. And I am telling you this in blunt and forthright language, not tip-toeing around so as not to ruffle your feathers, not pretending to dance to the tune of your misogynistic, imperialistic ideology - and not mincing my words so as to come across as "ladylike" and deferential to males the way sexists think adult human females should and usually do communicate. I suspect that getting pushback like this is not something you are accustomed to, so it perplexes and peeves you - and in your bafflement all you can do is take a combative "you can't tell me that" stance and harrumph that I am "not engaging honestly."

I am sorry if what I say is hard for you to to handle, but I think it's high time you were apprised of the true feelings and thoughts held by many of us who are members of the sex whose humanity you and the other adherents of the Church of Genderology aim to nullify, whose "lived experience" you insist on dismissing, whose views you are accustomed to talking over, and whose ways of constructing our own self-concepts you outright deny.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-29T11:42:32+00:00

I didn't write the damn poem.

This is supposed to be a debate sub.

You're the one who decided to type out a child's poem on a debate sub, not I. Also, I never said you wrote the dumb poem. A childish poem that I still have no idea why you thought it a good idea not just to quote from, but to share in full.

If you're not interested in an honest discussion just keep out of it.

First you tell me that I and billions of other adult human females cannot be called women and have no right to that word because we do not regard ourselves in the way you and other misogynistic dictators insist we must. When I have posed questions in response to specific statements you've made in your posts, you've repeatedly come back with replies that pointedly do not answer any of my questions. Now after already telling me I am dishonest in other posts, you sneeringly suggest that I am "not interested in an honest discussion" and tell me to STFU by ordering me to "just keep out of it." Sheesh.

The arrogance, bossiness and total lack of self-awareness in your posts are very telling.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-29T11:12:07+00:00

If a person didn't identify as a woman I wouldn't call them one, no. That would be disrespectful.

So if you were making a documentary or doing a report about the long, hard road to the USA's 19th amendment; the lives of long-reigning British queens such as Elizabeth I and II and Victoria; health issues like cervical cancer, menopause, uterine fibroids, pre-eclampsia, pudendal neuralgia and Alzheimer's disease; practices such as foot-binding in China, breast-ironing and FGM in Africa, forced veiling in Muslim countries and communities, and acid attacks in Pakistan and India; or the victims of such serial killers such as Ted Bundy, the Boston Strangler and the Yorkshire Ripper - you'd never, ever use the word women once because you haven't personally spoken to every individual involved or affected and thus can't be sure they "identify" or "identified" "with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex"?

If you were to go to a country where you don't speak the language and thus couldn't communicate with anyone, you would never once think of or describe any of the thousands of female adults you'd see on the streets and in crowded public places like airports, city squares and bazaars as women? If pressed, you'd insist that all of them must be referred to the way you said I must referred to, namely as

men or nonbinary people

??? And you'd tell yourself that the reason you are doing this is to avoid being disrespectful??

If a person didn't identify as a woman I wouldn't call them one, no. That would be disrespectful.

What is disrespectful in my view is your arrogant, high-handed decreeing that not a single one of the billions of adult human females currently alive on planet earth and all the billions who have walked the earth previously cannot be referred to as women unless they/we all have made declarations - and declarations that you have personally heard or read, too - that they/we identify with the second-class position of women in human societies and also with all the sexist, misogynistic cultural associations - in other words regressive sex stereotypes - that men have invented to oppress, dehumanize, restrict and hobble the female sex. And which today's QT advocates like you now arrogantly insist we all must "identify with" or else you will deny us the name/word that for millennia has described us.

The dictatorial behavior and stealing of what does not belong to you that you try to pretty up and pass off as respect and politeness is, in my opinion, simply male arrogance, male dominance, male entitlement, male appropriation and pure unadulterated misogyny repackaged as QT.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-28T23:08:30+00:00

This just proves my point about you not understanding what parts of speech are.

A thesaurus is not just for adjectives! A thesaurus lists synonyms for all types of words: nouns, verbs, pronouns, prepositions, articles/determiners, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, interjections.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-28T22:58:33+00:00

Just like you clearly don't understand parts of speech and how they function and work together in sentences and phrases, you don't seem to understand what cognitive ability means. You appear to take it as a given that everyone has the same exact mental faculties, ability to make sense of the world and thought processes as adults with normal-range IQs, fully developed brains and no impairments or neuro-atypical conditions. This is not true. Two-year olds don't think like adults do. People with dementia don't have the same mental powers as people without dementia. People with autism absorb information like everyone else, but it doesn't register in quite the same way.

Also, even those of us who have full mental capacities aren't firing on all cylinders 24/7/365. What any of us will take in from the world around us when we are are wide awake, on the ball and unstressed is very different to what we will absorb from the exact same input when we're drunk, stoned, drop-dead tired, or asleep - or when under great stress.

You said that

a woman is a person who identifies with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex.

When I disagreed and claimed this is not true for the majority of female adults on earth, you said I was wrong based on your own personal experience. You said

In my experience it is a tiny minority

Who think the way I believe most adult human females regard ourselves.

My questions remain: what makes you think you are an expert on how the world's adult human females think about ourselves and see ourselves?

Why do you get to tell legions of the world's adult human females that we can't be considered women anymore?

Like most trans people I believe in self identification when it comes to gender and as such would never tell anyone that they can't use a particular word to describe their gender identity. That said, the word "woman" is culturally linked to these sexist and regressive ideas

But you've just told me that the word for any adult human female who does not "identify with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex"

would be men or nonbinary people

You speak out of both sides of your mouth.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-28T22:14:57+00:00

Earlier you said:

a woman is a person who identifies with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex.

Now you say:

I wasn't talking about sex except to mention that there is a cultural association between womanhood (by the definition that I gave) and the female sex.

So although in the space of two sentences you mentioned sex three times and the female sex twice, your new line is that you weren't talking about sex any of those times. Like I said before: you speak/type genderist gibberish.

It seems like you are conceptualising gender identity in a different way to me however if you think that the majority of female people feel this way. In my experience it is a tiny minority.

I am saying I don't believe most of the world's adult human females have gender identities. Go to some maternity wards, senior centers, refugee camps and ask.

By the way since you invoked your experience, what is your experience exactly? How many female people have you interviewed about their self-concepts? In what continents, countries and regions do they live? What is the range of their birth dates?

When exactly did you do all this talking to adult human females of the world that enables you to speak so authoritatively about the inner lives of billions of us?

Most people have an idea of their gender identity by the age of 2, it's not something that requires some special level of cognitive ability.

No they don't. The fact that you claim this about 2 year-olds shows you have very little or zero experience raising or working with babies, toddlers and kids - and you know nothing about child psychology and early child development.

it's not something that requires some special level of cognitive ability.

How is it possible for people with zero or very little cognitive ability to "identify with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex"? Just parsing that hard-to-follow phrasing and trying to make sense out of it does my head in - and I'm operating with at a pretty high level of cognitive ability. How can wee bairns and people with limited IQ, dementia and language processing difficulties possibly pull off all the mental gymnastics you say everyone not only does engage in, but which we all must engage in so as to deserve a name?

How can 2 year olds possibly have a good enough understanding of social class and the be familiar enough with the broad sweep of cultural associations even within their own culture to "identify with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex" or the male sex for that matter? Have you ever spent time with any 2 year olds?

That said, why do you think it would be a bad thing for people [of the adult human female type] to be "left out" in this regard? There's nothing wrong with not being a woman.

The word woman has a meaning: adult human female. But those with deep-seated animus and covetousness towards adult human females have decided to appropriate the word for us and to totally redefine it. In your definition, a woman is anyone of either sex who identifies with the misogynistic, regressively sexist sex stereotypes that generations of women (the adult human female kind) fought so hard against. And according to your definition, anyone who does not identify with those misogynistic, regressively sexist sex stereotypes can't possibly be a woman. On the contrary, you say that all adult human females on earth who do not identify with the misogynistic, regressively sexist sex stereotypes that you insist all women must identify with

would be men or nonbinary people

I agree that "there is nothing wrong with not being a woman." What I think is wrong here is people with very sexist, regressive ideas and authoritarian mindsets who have not a clue about what a woman is suddenly coming along and telling all the adult human females on planet earth that we longer can be called women unless we identify with the very same sexist stereotypes that men have invented over millennia to dehumanize, limit, hobble and lord it over us. The arrogant, domineering, supercilious, colonialist sleight-of-hand thievery you are engaged in strips the half the adults on earth of our name.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-28T21:28:08+00:00

I stand by what I said earlier too. Namely this:

I don't think you understand what parts of speech are, their function and how they work together in sentences/phrases.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-28T20:53:40+00:00

First you say

We call certain people trans women because as well as being women, they are trans.

Trans woman != woman. Trans woman is a sub category of woman, a woman who is also trans.

Then when challenged you come back with

What "woman" means isn't actually relevant to this post at all.

Really? Do you truly think anyone is persuaded by your claim that the meanings of words aren't relevant? Especially on a thread where the OP asked:

So why are we calling certain people trans women?

As for this claim of yours:

You seem to be using the word trans as though it's a modifier on the word woman, when in fact it's an adjective describing a person who, in the particular example you are referencing is also a woman

I don't think you understand what parts of speech are, their function and how they work together in sentences/phrases.

Also, right before making that claim you yourself said:

We call certain people trans women because as well as being women, they are trans.

In that sentence you used "trans" as a modifier of women - twice.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-28T20:09:42+00:00

a woman is a person who identifies with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex.

So now sex is dependent on, or synonymous with, social class? LOL. Oh c'mon, mate. This is just more genderist gibberish. Misogynistic genderist gibberish that I find personally offensive to boot. I bet your mum and gran(s) would find it insulting too.

Since your definition makes being a woman entirely dependent on "identifying with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex," it leaves out vast swathes of the female human inhabitants of earth of adult age who do not "identify with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex." Which is probably the majority of the world's adult human females. Not very "inclusionary" of you.

What word would you use for those of us who are adult humans of the female sex but who do not "identify with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex"? Or don't we deserve a name that describes us and only us?

Your definition is not just exclusionary, it's incredibly ableist. Because it automatically leaves out all the world's adult human females who for various reasons - very low IQ, limited language processing skills, brain injuries, dementia - are incapable of the kinds of cognition required to "identify with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex" - whatever the hell that bunch of misogynistic malarkey is supposed to mean.

At the moment, there are roughly 4 million adult human females in the USA alone with Alzheimer's disease. Most of them are mothers and grandmothers. But due to the nature of AD, they do not have the ability, or they are fast losing the ability, to engage in the kinds of cognition and mental gymnastics required to "identify with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex." In fact, the vast majority would not have a clue about what your genderist gibberish is actually supposed to mean. According to you, these adult human females can't be called women - but males like Lia Thomas and Rachel Levine must be.

FYI: sex and being female aren't specific to humans. Other animals and plants are sexed, too. Female has a meaning that extends across all sexually reproducing species. A doe is a deer of the female sex. A mare is a horse of the female sex. A hen is a chicken of the female sex. A jenny is a donkey of the female sex. A woman is a human adult of the female sex.

Also: when you speak of "social class" and "culturally associated," how are others supposed to know exactly which societies and cultures you mean? And how are we supposed to know at what points/periods in history you're referring to? Fact is, social class is very different in places like the USA, the UK, Belgium, India, Russia, China. Moreover, within longstanding societies, the numbers, kinds and nature of social classes have changed over time. Culture varies markedly from place to place too, and cultures themselves change over time.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-26T17:21:08+00:00

It's a lyric and name of a song by John Lennon AND Yoko Ono.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-25T18:41:58+00:00

For instance a PPRI study found that 51% of men support requiring transgender individuals to use bathrooms corresponding to their assigned sex at birth, compared to 40% of women.

LOL, that PPRI survey you keep trotting out is now three years out of date.

Since early June 2019 when that survey was done, a great deal of information about the negative consequences of opening up female spaces to males based on male gender identity claims has come to light. This information has caused many people who want to "be kind" to people who identify as trans to have second thoughts about the wisdom of throwing all caution to the winds and granting males unfettered access to female spaces so long as they claim to "identify as" or "feel like" women/girls. I don't know exactly where public opinion on the matter of restroom access is now, but I know that a poll from three years ago can't be relied to reflect current thinking.

According to a poll, 59% of men support banning trans women in women's sports compared tp 46% of women. 29% of men oppose banning trans women in women's sports compared to 34% of women.

This second poll you cite is a Politico/Morning Consult online poll done March 6-8, 2021 - a full year before Lia Thomas won a women's NCAA national swimming title at the USA championships. Again, public opinion - and the views of sports policy makers - seem to have changed substantially since then.

A Gallup poll of Americans done two months later, in mid-May 2021, found that 72% of men and 53% of women thought that athletes should play in the sports category of their "birth gender," which presumably was taken to mean their sex.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/350174/mixed-views-among-americans-transgender-issues.aspx

Another poll conducted in June 2022 by The Washington Post and University of Maryland found only 3 in 10 Americans think males who identify as transgender should be allowed to participate in girls' and women's sports. A majority, 55%, said they were opposed to allowing males who identify as girls compete in girls' high school sports. Nearly 60% said they opposed to allowing males who identify as women compete in women's sports at the college and professional levels.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/madelinehalpert/2022/06/14/only-3-in-10-americans-support-trans-athletes-participation-in-female-sports-poll-finds/?sh=5fce3bab26cf

One of the reasons for the disparities in the figures is the way the questions are worded and framed/asked.

Women currently participating in elite-level sports are even more strongly opposed to allowing males to use gender identity claims to horn in on female competition.

In April 2022, the Cyclistes Professionnels Associés (CPA), which represents men’s and women’s professional bike riders, said it had sought the opinions of its female members before making representations to cycling’s governing body, the UCI, about "trans inclusion" policy.

“The CPA women ran a survey a few months ago and over 92 per cent did not agree with [male] trans athletes racing in the women’s peloton,” Marion Clignet, the French triple world champion track cyclist, is quoted as saying by The Telegraph.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nine-tenths-of-female-cyclists-dont-want-to-race-against-trans-women-according-to-survey-d2nhxkn9v

The new transgender and XY DSD inclusion policy recently released by FINA and its supporting documents show the views agreed upon by world-renowned experts that FINA assembled and consulted over the past year in the areas of sports performance, sports physiology, sports law and policy, and international human rights law and policy. FINA also consulted hundreds of swimmers, and paid particular attention to the views of female swimmers - a very different tack taken to the approach of the IOC, which has repeatedly frozen female athletes out of the involvement in decisions about opening up women's competition to males based on their gender identity claims.

I suggest you take the time watch FINA's video presentation explaining its new policy to find out more. It's an interesting presentation. From circa 1:46: https://youtu.be/tiujU5nUq6A?t=6399

As for this:

Last year my sister and I (both cis women) overheard our dad misgender Rachel Levine while talking on the phone with his brother. As soon as the conversation was finished, we called him out on it and insisted he use "she" for Rachel Levine. He kept telling us that Rachel Levine is a "he" and is a man. My dad is a white, straight, cis, able-bodied and middle class male, basically he fits the definition of "privileged" in the social justice context

Oh c'mon. That anecdote you have told several times on various threads about how you and your sister once overheard your father call Rachel Levine "he" and a man and then you bravely "called him out on it" and insisted he use language that you dictated is just pointless virtue signaling which simply goes tp show that you and your sister eavesdrop on your dad's private phone convos, then hector him like scolding busybodies and authoritarian, finger-wagging speech-controllers. Viewing this exchange from the perspective of a parent, I think it would have been reasonable and appropriate for your dad to have responded to your attempts to educate him and get him to "do better" by calling "time out" and telling you and your sister to STFU, MYOB, show some courtesy and respect and get off his back.

But anyways, even if there were a point to that story which could be interpreted as advancing and bolstering your arguments, it still would be totally beside the point on this particular thread.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-24T19:24:01+00:00

Actually, I reject the idea of "feminized" neurons - I was just using the terminology of the theory we're discussing.

The general points I was trying to make are:

1) Pregnant women's bodies don't manufacture hormones in haphazard and unpredictable ways wholly unrelated to and independent of the embryos/fetuses they are gestating at the time.

2) The hormones that pregnant women's bodies make do not get dumped in undiluted, unchanged form directly into the circulatory systems of fetuses - which is a key part of what would have to happen according to the theory that says some male and female fetuses end up developing all the anatomy and physiology customary for their sex yet somehow also develop brains/neurons/nervous systems of the opposite sex.

3) The idea that males might end up with a "feminized" brain because of exposure to too much estrogen during gestation in utero assumes that male brains are not accustomed to, and built to handle, estrogen and therefore when exposed to "excess" estrogen in utero, they end up "feminized." When in fact, male brain development and activity in utero - and throughout the rest of life - seem to be heavily dependent on and shaped by estrogen - a hormone that males naturally make in various parts of their bodies (testes, adrenals, fat and the brain). The main way that males make estrogen is by turning some of the testosterone originally produced in their testes into estrogen through aromatization (the same process that takes place in the placenta during pregnancy with a female fetus to turn the mother's elevated testosterone into estrogen).

There is a complex interplay between the blood chemistry, and the hormones, of pregnant women and fetuses; but each fetus makes its own endogenous sex hormones from its own gonads (ovaries or testes) and its own adrenal glands and those internally-made hormones (and the fetuses own genetics) are the dominant drivers of sex development. In other words, fetuses are not mere repositories that maternal hormones are poured into. In fact, fetuses are not mainly repositories for maternal hormones at all.

How a fetus develops in terms of sex appears to be primarily and most strongly affected and determined by the endogenous hormones that each fetus makes by and for itself - along with the other aspects inherent to the fetus itself, such as whether it has male or female DNA in each cell, whether it has male or female hormone receptors and physiology, and the fetus's own genetic profile/DNA, which is different to the genetic profile/DNA of the mother.

There is no evidence that if/when the ovaries, adrenals and fat of pregnant women's bodies make hormones that are atypical for pregnant women carrying a fetus of either sex that this leads to atypical physical or psychological development in the fetus.

A maternal hormone "imbalance" such as low progesterone might lead a pregnant woman to have a miscarriage. Higher than usual maternally-generated testosterone has been shown to be linked to premature birth and smaller-than-usual, low birthweight babies - this is because high testosterone (especially chronically as in PCOS) diminishes the elasticity of the uterus, reducing its ability expand to typical full-size in the latest weeks of pregnancy. But there is no evidence whatsoever that maternal hormones that are atypical, imbalanced, or go up in down in various combinations during fetal development somehow end up inside fetuses where they cause "surges," "spikes" and "washes" of opposite-sex hormones to rain down on the fetal brain cells, leading the fetus to develop a brain-body mismatch that will evince many years later.

But assuming just for the sake of argument that a male baby could be born with a "feminized" brain because his mother had hinky hormones when he was developing in utero, then yes I would think the impact of what happened to that child in utero would definitely be largely or entirely counteracted by the fact that in the first year of life all male babies go through male mini puberty of infancy, a 4-7 months-long period when their testes pump out huge amount of testosterone and their entire bodies including their brains are bathed/steeped in all that T. As anyone who has ever been around babies knows, the development that they undergo week by week after birth is really dramatic - and post-natal development in infancy and early childhood is at least as important as pre-natal development, in fact probably more so.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-24T00:21:55+00:00

It occurs in prenatal development when the nervous system starts to develop - it can be affected by raised hormones in the mother's blood (testosteron for XX ferus and estrogene for XY fetus) and the brain will start developing as it should for opposite sex. (also the neuronal connection for your "gender" will be performed - idk how to describe it better in english im not native english speaker sorry).

This is hogwash. The med student who wrote the passages you quoted seems to think that during gestation in utero pregnant women pump out sex hormones willy-nilly that then pass directly to the embryo/fetus unmediated. This isn't the case.

The extent to which the mix and levels of hormones made by pregnant women's gonads and glands get into a developing embryo or fetus and match up to the hormones inside an embryo/fetus is unclear. For obvious reasons, getting samples of human embryonic or fetal blood is so risky that it's unethical and just not done, so there is much that science and medicine don't know about the relationship of maternal and fetal hormones in humans.

But the sex hormones that most heavily influence the development of human fetuses appear to be those made by each fetus's own internal organs - mainly the fetal gonads, which are either testes or ovaries, and develop at 7-8 weeks post-fertilization, and the fetal adrenal glands. If anything, it appears that the hormones a fetus makes from its own gonads and adrenals have at least as much - or even more influence - on the mother's hormones than the hormones made by the mother's own ovaries and glands have on the fetus.

Yes, of course a human fetus is exposed to circulating maternal hormones to some extent. But it's not like whatever hormones the mother's ovaries, adrenals and fat cells pump go directly into a developing fetus. This is because of the role of the placenta, the special endocrine organ grown during pregnancy that connects the circulatory systems of the mother and the embryo/fetus and serves as a protective interface between the two.

The placenta does many different things to insure that an embryo/fetus won't be harmed by things the mother ingests or is exposed to that get into her blood.

One role of the placenta is to prevent the mother's immune system from responding to the offspring she is gestating as though it didn't belong the way transplant recipients customarily mount rejection responses to transplanted organs. BTW, a sex hormone seems to play the most important role in suppressing the maternal immunologic response to fetal antigens - but that sex hormone is neither testosterone or estrogen; rather, it's progesterone.

Another role of the placenta is to protect female fetuses from exposure to maternal testosterone. A fact few genderists seem aware of is that pregnant women don't just have naturally elevated levels of estrogen, they have have naturally elevated testosterone. The normal range for women age 18 and up is 0.02-1.68 nmol/L. Pregnancy range is 1.7-4.2 nmol/L. When a woman is pregnant with female offspring, the placenta converts the high levels of the natural T in the mother's blood into estrogen through the process of aromatization.

During fetal development, aromatase converts androgens to estrogens in the placenta, which is the link between the mother's blood supply and the fetus. This conversion in the placenta prevents androgens from directing sexual development in female fetuses. After birth, the conversion of androgens to estrogens takes place in multiple tissues.

https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/gene/cyp19a1/

In the extremely rare event that there is an aromatase deficiency in the placenta, a female fetus will become androgenized. Aromatase deficiency used to be considered a disorder incompatible with life, but a few cases of the deficiency have been reported in children and adolescents. However, aromatase deficiency in females leads to a disorder of sex development in which the sex organs are visibly affected. The med student who wrote the passages you quoted seems to think that the excess testosterone could and would affect a female fetus's developing brain and nervous system without affecting the development of the genitals. But this isn't the case.

The role of the placenta in regulating the hormones a male fetus will get from the mother is less clear. However, studies of women babies in parts of the world with very high pollution and environmental toxins suggests the human placenta is capable of protecting male fetuses from exposure to harmful environmental chemicals and hormone disruptors that mimic estrogens and could interfere with normal male development, such as Bisphenol A.

The med school student who wrote the passages also makes the error of thinking that the development and functioning of brains in males in utero and later on in life are entirely dependent on testosterone. But that's not the case.

Male behaviors require both testosterone and estrogen. Circulating testosterone activates the androgen receptor (AR) and is also converted into estrogen in the brain via aromatase. This conversion is the primary source of estrogen to the male brain. It is unclear whether testosterone and estrogen signaling interact to masculinize neural circuits. Using a genetic approach, we show extensive sexual dimorphism in the number and projections of aromatase expressing neurons. The masculinization of these cells is independent of AR but can be induced by either testosterone or estrogen, indicating a role for aromatase in sexual differentiation of these neurons.

Testosterone is required for male behaviors in most vertebrates, including mice and humans. Testosterone mediates its effects by activating AR and male mice mutant for this receptor do not display sexual behavior or aggression (Ohno et al., 1974). Testosterone is essential in newborn and adult male mice for the display of sex specific behaviors such as aggression (Finney and Erpino, 1976; Peters et al., 1972; Wallis and Luttge, 1975). This testicular hormone is thought to masculinize neural circuits in neonatal rodents, and to act upon these pathways in adult males to permit the display of dimorphic behaviors (Phoenix et al., 1959).

Estrogen is also essential for male behaviors. The requirement for estrogen to masculinize behavior seems counter-intuitive as this ovarian hormone is essentially undetectable in the male circulation. All estrogenic steroids are synthesized in vivo from testosterone or related androgens in a reaction catalyzed by aromatase. Aromatase expressing cells in the brain convert circulating testosterone into estrogen, and it is this local estrogen that is thought to control dimorphic behaviors in males (Figure 1A) (MacLusky and Naftolin, 1981; Naftolin and Ryan, 1975). Consistent with a requirement for estrogen in male behaviors, aromatase activity is essential for male behaviors. Mice mutant for aromatase exhibit a profound reduction in male sexual behavior and aggression (Honda et al., 1998; Toda et al., 2001). Similar to testosterone, estrogen is essential in neonates and adults for the display of dimorphic behaviors in males (Finney and Erpino, 1976; McCarthy, 2008; Scordalakes and Rissman, 2004; Toda et al., 2001; Wallis and Luttge, 1975). Estrogen mediates many of its effects by signaling through the estrogen receptors ERα and ERβ, which exhibit overlapping expression patterns, and regulate masculinization of the brain and behavior in a complex, redundant manner (Bodo et al., 2006; Ogawa et al., 1999; Ogawa et al., 2000; Ogawa et al., 2004; Perez et al., 2003; Rissman et al., 1997). The role of a third estrogen receptor, GPR30, in male behaviors is presently unknown (Revankar et al., 2005

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851224/

Another problem with the med student's theory is that puberty of adolescence is not the first time in a male child's life after his birth that he produces very high levels of testosterone that will reach and presumably impact his brain.

In the first year after birth, male humans also go through male mini puberty of infancy in which for several months their testes produce testosterone in adult amounts. So even if it were true that gender dysphoria results when a male child's brain somehow gets too much maternal estrogen during development in utero, then surely the baby's emergent "girl brain" and nascent opposite-sex gender identity would be counteracted by his brain, neurons and nervous system being flooded by the massive amount of testosterone his testes pump out for months during male mini puberty of infancy. Years before a male child would start developing secondary sex characteristics that the med student's theory says he'd sense as "errors" and would trigger gender dysphoria and a sense of being "in the wrong body," his testicles should already have generated more than enough testosterone for several months in babyhood to completely drown out and stamp out any incipient "feminized neurons" in his brain and any "girl/lady feelz" in his mind once and for all.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-16T19:01:49+00:00

Or we didn't used to until males very recently started using gender identity claims to invad

Can you name one person who's done that, who's not trans and just faking it?

How can anyone tell who is legit trans, if there is such a thing, or just faking it?

But that's beside the point. If there are people who are "true trans," it still wouldn't explain or excuse why males who are "true trans" have to invade girls' and women's sport. There is no reason on earth that I can see why male TPs like Cece Telfer, June Eastwood, Lia Thomas, Rachel McKinnon, Terry Miller, Andraya Yearwood, Meghan Youngren, Laurel Hubbard, Chelsea Wolfe, Emily Bridges, Stephanie Barrett, Sasha Jane Lowerson and the hundreds more like them absolutely must participate in women's and girls' sports.

There are many male TPs who think it's wrong for males to use their gender identities to horn in on female sports. There are many female athletes with trans and NB gender identities who have continued to compete in female sports. Female TPs are not participating in male sports in anywhere near the numbers that male TPs are horning in on female sports. And the few who have entered male sports never, ever win. Most don't place or even make it off the bench. Funny that.

In sports, the only time people are ever allowed to move from one category to another is when they go up into a category in which they will have less advantage, not more. So a 14 year old who's really big and strong and fast can step up to the next age rung and compete with 15 and 16 year olds, but a 14 year old who's small and weak and slow can't step down to compete with the younger kids.

Only male TPs and their allies are demanding that male TPs, and they alone, should be able to use their gender identity claims - real or fake, it doesn't matter - to compete in a category of sport where male TPs have massive physical advantages over all other participants. Only male TPs and their allies are demanding that male TPs be given the right to punch down on, lord it over and unfairly trounce those who are naturally smaller, weaker and slower. Then when girls and women complain, male TPs and their allies turn around and call the girls and women names and say girls and women just need to "try harder."

Please explain how you justify this.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-16T18:45:08+00:00

I mean you think I'm one of those so I'm just speaking against "my own kind"

So do you think that because I am a woman, it entitles me to speak against all women? That because I am a mother, I'm allowed to slag off all women with children? That because I live in certain country, I can cast aspersions on everyone who resides in my country? You get the point, I'm sure.

The only people who have been consistently kind to me are women and trans people.

But making sweeping judgments - good or bad - about entire populations based solely on the small number of people you have interacted with and who have been kind or mean to you personally is never a good idea. I think you need to broaden your horizons and stop seeing life solely through the lens of your own personal experience. Read some biographies. Study some history. Learn about life in other cultures, and other time periods. Thinking about me, me, me all the time is a recipe for misery.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-16T18:32:29+00:00

None of us has control over our DNA or the cards we were dealt

So why stop people from trying to change their cards? Why treat them as if they're always what they were born?

But I don't see you as someone who is just trying to change the cards you were dealt. I see you as someone whose aim is to steal other people's cards - and grab all the poker chips so you can hog them all for yourself too. You are insisting that you and other males like you must be allowed to dictate the rules of the game for everyone in the world, and that you and other males must always win at all costs, even though you know that your winning means untold numbers girls and women all lose.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-16T18:07:38+00:00

Thanks for responding. But since you admit you are "pretty young" and that you have no evidence whatsoever for claiming that there was "a panic about lesbian women in women's locker rooms" in the past, I really have to wonder: how is it that you can so comfortably and confidently say things that malign entire generations of older women? What do you think gives you the right to do this?

Do you think badmouthing entire generations of women like this really helps convince other people that you are a woman yourself, that you know what it's like to be a woman, and you have women's best interests at heart?

One of my favorite people is a lesbian friend of mine and she's wonderful, her and her gf are couple goals (and yes this person knows I'm trans and I've never shamed her for not being attracted to trans people, that would be v rude).

You really think that because you say one of your fave people is a lesbian, and you've never shamed her for not dating or bedding males, it means you're not homophobic against lesbians? Oy vey.

If you want to slag off older generations for climate change, have at it. But please stop spreading total lies about entire generations of older women that paint us all as horrible homophobes who had special hostility towards and were in a panic about lesbians. I actually think earlier generations were generally less homophobic and more accepting of diversity and nonconformity that younger people who've bought into and are peddling gender identity nonsense.

For a picture of what the past was like, watch the movie "Silkwood," based on the true story of anti-nuclear activist Karen Silkwood, who died in 1979 on her way to meet a NY Times reporter with information about nefarious doings in the nuclear waste industry. In the movie, Silkwood, played by Meryl Streep, shares a house with her boyfriend played by Kurt Russell and her best friend, a lesbian named Dolly played by Cher. Neither Silkwood nor her BF or anyone else in the movie has any problem with Dolly being a lesbian. Dolly is presented as a person who is as normal and as quirky as everyone else in the movie. The woman Dolly has a love affair with, a hairdresser played by Diana Scarwid, is like a zillion other "ordinary" women. No one in the film finds them odd or is in a panic about them being around or using women's change rooms. In the 1970s most women had no problem with lesbians. And there were lots of lesbians out and about back then.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-16T02:53:02+00:00

Idk how you can claim that trans women are all dangerous r*posts and then later say there are male people you care about?

Yikes, you really need to learn abut categories and logic.

No one claimed that all TW are dangerous. Or that all males are dangerous.

Women don't want TW in our "safe spaces" because TW are male. Males commit nearly all sex crimes (98%), and the vast majority of those crimes (88%) are committed against females - and one of the consequences of male sex crimes for female people is that we can end up pregnant through rape. Moreover, males are bigger and stronger and faster than females, which makes us very easy prey for the bad guys - sitting ducks.

But even males who don't pose a physical threat to females are usually sexually interested in girls and women and are very very interested in looking at us when we are naked or partially undressed, and generally prying into our private business. Some males are fetishists and pervs. Other males are just pushy. Many males sexually harass and pester girls and women... And all males who stand to pee into toilets end up getting their stinky male urine all over the toilet seats and the floors, which creates a bunch of problems for girls and women since we have to sit to do our business.

So to protect girls and women from male sex assault as well as from unwanted male sexual attention and a variety of other bothersome, unhygienic male behaviors, the rule is to segregate restrooms, locker rooms and places like shelters and prisons by sex. It's easier to keep ALL males out than to have special rules that let some males in based on how nice they are as individuals.

Men and boys raised to respect girls and women have always understood that the best and most efficient way to keep the minority of males who are predatory, dangerous and creepy out of female spaces is to keep ALL males out. They've never had a problem with that.

But now there's this huge group of males who do have a problem with it. They find it outrageous that girls and women desire and traditionally have been allowed to have places where they as males can't enter and aren't wanted. They say they must be allowed into those places, and they don't care how women and girls feel about it. Funny thing is, the males who are demanding they be be allowed to remove girls' and women's right to safe spaces away from males say they "identify as" and "feel like" girls and women themselves. Some say they actually are us like you do.

If males who claim to "identify as" women had any compassion for girls and women, and any understanding of what it's like to be female, then they/you would see how distressing and scary it is to be on the receiving end of the onslaught of male aggression, intrusiveness and abusiveness that TW are dishing out to us on the daily. But it seems to be beyond you.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-16T02:20:46+00:00

I remember being 6 years old and thinking about castrating myself with scissors.

Wow, you were precocious to know all about surgical castration when you were 6! Most kids that age don't understand the significance of testicles yet.

Also, in the retconned standard narrative TW tell of their childhoods, or mothers of trans kids tell, the line is usually that as a little boy so and so wanted to cut his penis off with scissors - or nail scissors in some versions. This is the first time I've heard someone say they wanted to go for the balls.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-16T02:00:55+00:00

Is there some sort of problem with china making pharmaceutical products? It's possible to buy enough estradiol raws to last someone years, so I'm grateful for that backup plan if I can't ever get my medication through the medical system here.

No, no problem. I just was pointing out that you are naive if you think getting stuff from China is somehow avoiding big business and mass manufacturing. You made it sound like TW all are making estradiol from growing your own soybeans in yams in your own yard or buying it from from a craft compounding operation that makes up bespoke formulations from home-grown or artisan ingredients.

Sorry I was never in sports, I guess? I was a band and dance nerd in school

Just because you didn't personally do sports in school means you've never known or noticed any girls or women who did? I've never played American football, basketball or golf, but I've seen quite a few Super Bowls, NBA championships and golf tourneys on TV. I can reel off the names of big sports stars in men's sports that I've never played and never had a chance of playing. I've never competed in the Olympics, but I've watched a lot of Olympics coverage.

Lots of people watch and follow sports they don't do personally. I really don't get this kind of weird world view that you have. Life must be dull if you only pay attention to things that directly affect you personally.

Since you insist you are a woman and you say you have always believed yourself to be female, it seems odd to me that you have so little information and curiosity about female anatomy and physiology. To fill you in: teenage girls and women who do sports have MUCH higher rates of lower limb injuries than males. This is due to physical factors like the changes in ligaments, tendons and muscles over the course of the monthly ovulation-menstruation cycle and the greater Q angle that girls develop as they undergo skeletal growth and their pelvis and hips widen. And it's due to the fact that pretty much all sports training is based on and geared towards male bodies.

Female athletes are at a higher risk for ACL injuries than males. The risk of ACL injuries in female teenage athletes is up to six times higher than in male athletes of the same age, competing in the same sports. The risk of an ACL injury is highest in the 15-19 age groups and among those playing sports such as soccer, volleyball and basketball. The majority of ACL injuries are non-contact injuries resulting from landing from a jump, performing a cutting maneuver, or decelerating suddenly.

One of the biological reasons female athletes are at higher risk is that their hips are wider than males. This characteristic makes them great squatters but puts their Q-angle at a higher degree than males This Q-angle which is about 18 degrees, where as a male’s is about 12 degrees, tends to cause a Valgus position (shown below). Video analysis has shown that during landing, cutting and decelerating movements on occasions when injury occurred, the knee or knees tended to be in (or very close to) full extension; the body’s center of mass was behind and away from the weight bearing limb and the knee was in a valgus position — i.e., with the hip internally rotated and adducted and the tibia externally rotated.

https://demonactivities.com/acl-prevention/

Although the same anatomical and physiological factors that affect girls and women doing sports affect girls and women who dance, in some fields of dance such as traditional ballet the training that girls get starting in childhood is protective:

The increased incidence of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries in female athletes, particularly in sports like soccer, led to a similar analysis in dancers. The ACL is one of the four critical stabilizing ligaments in the knee, and an injury to it can be devastating, requiring surgical repair and/or 9-12 months of rehabilitation.

Interestingly, the incidence of ACL injury in female ballerinas is relatively low. At the Harkness Center for Dance Injuries, research showed that the jump training young dancers received in traditional ballet programs reduced their risk of such injuries compared to other female athletes. The emphasis on landing a jump with the balls of the feet first promotes a protective knee bend on impact. Indeed, research in female soccer players concurrently revealed that improper landing technique and a quadriceps/hamstring strength imbalance contributed significantly to their higher incidence of ACL injuries versus males. It is now recommended that female athletes learn how to land from a jump correctly (bending the knees to absorb the shock of landing) and undergo directed hamstring strengthening as part of a standard preventative program.

ACL injuries can and do occur in dancers—they are just at lower risk than other female athletes.

https://www.rmaeug.com/danceakp.html

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-15T23:44:42+00:00

Males aren't deserving of trust and love

Who the eff do you think you are to tell me that the males in my life whom I know, trust and love aren't deserving of trust and love?

Also, why do you give yourself permission to say things that are openly, blatantly misandrist against all males, but you tell girls and women we are hateful and horrible for wanting to keep males out of a few select spaces and our sports for reasons of safety, privacy, dignity, wellbeing and fairness?

Why are males who want to be women allowed to be wary of other males, but women are not allowed to express the same sentiments? Why are you so adamant about asserting that personal comfort and protection from harm is your right whilst at the same time you are so insistent about denying this same right to girls and women?

You treating me as something I never asked for

Oh grow up. Some of your stock answers make you sound like you're 8. None of us asked to be born. None of us has control over our DNA or the cards we were dealt. Everyone has a cross to bear of some kind. Lots of people on planet earth suffer just as much or far worse than people with gender dysphoria. And you know what- no one gets out of our earthly existence alive, either.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-15T23:34:47+00:00

You going into a women's bathroom is like an able person parking in a disabled parking spot. The disabled parking spot is not to limit you, it is to prevent someone else from being limited by a disability you don't have. The women's restroom is not to limit you, it is an accommodation for people who would otherwise be excluded from society -look up how girls in some parts of the world are not able to go to school during their periods if you don't get why this is necessary.

Well said! Also, derple seems oblivious to the fact that girls and women are not just more physically exposed and vulnerable when we use toilets due to our female anatomy, we are also physically far less likely to be able to fend off or get away from a male attacker than another male is - and when men rape girls and women, a common consequence we have to worry about and deal with is pregnancy. Derple seems to have no idea how much the fear and dread of unwanted pregnancy being forced on us via rape affects the outlook of girls and women.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-15T23:11:13+00:00

Yet you would never say this to lesbian women. And people literally did, there was a panic about lesbian women in women's locker rooms, and it was absurd and homophobic. On what basis should the default be to assume that everyone is transphobic?

No one would ever say this to lesbian women because lesbians are women, FFS. Lesbians don't have dicks and balls. Lesbians don't have the male gaze, male entitlement, male pushiness, male rape mentality, male body strength, speed and power or male hand span, punching power and grip strength. Lesbians don't have form for menacing women, flashing their genitals and masturbating in public places. Lesbians don't have the ability to impregnate, either.

Also, can you please tell me exactly when and where this panic about lesbians in women's locker rooms occurred? I have been using women's locker rooms since I was a little girl in the late 1950s, and I never, ever heard of this or saw any evidence of this panic. Most of the women's locker rooms I have used have been in the USA. However, I have traveled a fair bit, and in my travels I've never seen or heard this either. But all the places I've ever been there have been lesbians around - and my recollection is that the vast majority of girls and women who are not lesbians themselves don't feel discomfort around lesbians, much less "panic."

I don't deny that lesbians have faced a lot of homophobia and discrimination. I know lots of lesbians, have lots of lesbian friends, and I had lesbian great aunts born at the end of the 19th century - so I have some sense of the prejudices that lesbians have experienced. I just have never seen this particular manifestation of it.

Maybe I'm blocking it out, but I honestly don't recall any time in the last nearly 70 years when there was a panic about lesbian women in women's locker rooms. On the contrary, similar to sports, women's locker rooms traditionally have always been a place where women of all sexual orientations got on just fine. One of the best things about the relationship between Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert in the 1970s was that they were fierce rivals on the tennis court, and great pals and sources of mutual support for one another in the locker room - and behind the scenes generally. Which is how it has always been between lesbians and the majority of straight women in the USA my whole life.

Now that I've wracked my memory, and asked a lot of friends if they recall this panic (including a number of lesbians ranging in ages from their 50s to late 80s), I have to say I really resent young trans activists today claiming there used to be a moral panic amongst women about lesbians in women's locker rooms and other female spaces. I especially resent when male TRAs inform me that this is how things used to be. You are smearing whole swathes of the female population much older than you by telling us we all felt and displayed homophobia towards lesbians that a great many of us did not feel or display. My hunch is that you are projecting your own homophobia and prejudice against lesbians onto entire generations of older women. Please stop. It's sexist and presumptuous of you.

Finally, the way you try to make it seem like TW and lesbians have common cause regarding restrooms and locker rooms is more forced teaming.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-15T22:26:43+00:00

The people I know buy estradiol raws from China, the precursor to the oil-suspended estradiol that is usually prescribed to trans women. It's not really practical to manufacture raws on our own, it's a synthesization process that starts with purple yams or other phytoestrogens.

But you said the hormone formulations TW rely on don't come from Big Pharma. China is Big Pharma. China is the world's single largest supplier of basic chemicals and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) that provide the raw materials for the global pharmaceutical industry. From big industrial factories owned and operated by companies like J & J, Roche, AbbVie, Sanofi, Pfizer, Bristol Meyer, etc to licensed compounding pharmacies to individuals with a chem lab in their garage or a meth lab in their RV - most everyone in the drugs trade nowadays gets their raw materials from China, a country with more than 6000 pharmaceutical companies.

Now China is increasingly focusing on the development and production of finished pharmaceutical products (FPPs), primarily to serve the domestic market - which is the second largest drugs market in the world after the USA - but also with an eye to making FPPs for export. But the new focus on FPPs isn't to supplant China's role as the largest producer of the raw materials for all the makers of FPPs outside of China, it's to supplement it. China wants to keep its position as the main source of APIs and other pharma ingredients as it also produces more and more FPPs.

Today, all of the world's major estrogen products - whether you buy them already in finished form, or as raw materials are made or derived from plants - soybeans or yams - except for Premarin, which still is made from horse urine.

I have a hunch you think that estradiol is the only estrogen women's bodies produce and that "bioidentical estradiol" means the same thing as "natural estradiol." Neither is true. Estradiol is the major estrogen women produce from the ovaries, but it's not the only estrogen we produce.

Also bioidentical estradiol doesn't mean natural; it simply means it has the same molecular structure as the estradiol made by human ovaries. Another name is17β-estradiol.

Everyone produces a bit of estradiol unless they have a condition otherwise.

Yes, this is true. And unless it's coming from ovaries, the most common way that estradiol is made in the human body is by aromatizing either androstenedione into estrone and then converting the estrone into estradiol, or by converting the androstenedione into testosterone and then converting the testosterone into estradiol. The testicles and other sites in the male reproductive tract are a main source of estradiol in males.

Estradiol is produced especially within the follicles of the ovaries, but also in other tissues including the testicles, the adrenal glands, fat, liver, the breasts, and the brain. Estradiol is produced in the body from cholesterol through a series of reactions and intermediates.[10] The major pathway involves the formation of androstenedione, which is then converted by aromatase into estrone and is subsequently converted into estradiol. Alternatively, androstenedione can be converted into testosterone, which can then be converted into estradiol.

The effect of estradiol (and estrogens in general) upon male reproduction is complex.

Estrogens have traditionally been considered female hormones. Nevertheless, the presence of estrogen in males has been known for over 90 years. Initial studies suggested that estrogen was deleterious to male reproduction because exogenous treatments induced developmental abnormalities.

However, demonstrations of estrogen synthesis in the testis and high concentrations of 17β-estradiol in rete testis fluid suggested that the female hormone might have a function in normal male reproduction. Identification of estrogen receptors and development of biological radioisotope methods to assess estradiol binding revealed that the male reproductive tract expresses estrogen receptor extensively from the neonatal period to adulthood.

This indicated a role for estrogens in normal development, especially in efferent ductules, whose epithelium is the first in the male reproductive tract to express estrogen receptor during development and a site of exceedingly high expression. In the 1990s, a paradigm shift occurred in our understanding of estrogen function in the male, ushered in by knockout mouse models where estrogen production or expression of its receptors was not present. These knockout animals revealed that estrogen's main receptor (estrogen receptor 1 [ESR1]) is essential for male fertility and development of efferent ductules, epididymis, and prostate, and that loss of only the membrane fraction of ESR1 was sufficient to induce extensive male reproductive abnormalities and infertility.

This review provides perspectives on the major discoveries and developments that led to our current knowledge of estrogen's importance in the male reproductive tract and shaped our evolving concept of estrogen's physiological role in the male.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6044326/

The only time I have ever heard Q angles used in the context of trans people is by this infamous Twitter user bevvie112,

But the fact that you have never heard about Q angles anywhere else is a reflection on you, not on anyone else. Matters like Q angles come up in many discussions entirely separately to discussions about trans. Not everything is about you and the trans lobby.

Women and our bodies existed and we had issues in sports and other situations due our Q angles long before the current-day trans movement got going and long before males started using gender identity claims to horn in on women's and girls' sports. You seem to think the only reason GC women or anyone else would know about biology, human sex differences and female physiology in particular is so we can refute the claims made by QT and TRAs. Again, not everything is about TW or in reference to TW.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-15T19:39:12+00:00

Well trans people are not going away, I don't know exactly what you hope to accomplish. If I'm going to get thrown in jail for taking hrt or wearing a bra someday then it'd be pretty clear to me who's in the right and wrong.

No one is saying trans people to go away. Women are saying that we don't want males in female spaces and sports no matter how the males claim to identify and no matter what alterations males have made to their bodies and appearance.

It's not personal. Most of us have male friends and relatives we love dearly. Some of us have male children. But we still don't want even the males we love and trust- and we know wouldn't hurt a fly or behave like pervs and predators - in women's spaces and sports.

In certain women's spaces like restrooms, locker rooms, fitting rooms, breastfeeding lounges, women's homeless shelters, some prisons, etc exception is made for male infants and young boys who are in the company of their mothers or other female carers. But even there we draw a very strict line. The fact that women and girls don't want to have to deal with our intimate bodily needs and get undressed in front of our male friends and with our tween, teen and adult sons, our fathers, uncles, fathers-in-law etc doesn't mean we hate them.

And in some cases, there is no allowance even for very young boys. We don't allow boys who are not as good as other boys in male sports to play girls' sports. Or we didn't used to until males very recently started using gender identity claims to invade and dominate in girls' and women's sports.

And please enough with the drama. No one is going to throw you in jail for taking exogenous hormones or wearing a bra.

The underlying issue here is that you seem to be unable to deal with women saying "no" to you. You think women saying "no" is the same as us saying we hate you. You interpret women setting boundaries as an expression of personal animus directed at you.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-15T19:04:51+00:00

Then why do studies state histologically identical? Different cells could present the same tissue.

Studies are specific. The studies you cited were about what HCPs and scientists see when they use medical imaging to look at body parts. In the case of the papers you linked to, the imaging was of human breast tissue.

There are many, many studies done using microscopes to look at cells. There's vast numbers of studies and research papers on the ways cells behave. For example, the papers you cited were written to tell HCPs what tissue anomalies to look out for when reading breast scans. Whereas if you looked up breast cancer, you'd find a lot of papers about the behaviors of the cells in breast cancer.

If you search "human breast cancer" and "human breast cancer cells" you'll come up with different results. However, many research papers will deal with both tissues and cells because tissues are made of cells, and in cancer there is a problem with cellular growth and replication. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4929267/

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-15T18:27:22+00:00

Pregnancy for trans women is actively being worked on and will eventually be a thing

Oh no my kidneys don't pass /j

Huh? How on earth will any TW be able to sustain a pregnancy without female kidney function? No offense, but you seem utterly clueless about what pregnancy involves.

female Q angles

Lol don't tell me you read that ridiculous transvestigation stuff which is literally the only place I see this term used.

Female Q angles are very important to those of us who do or did sports and are female, and who have coached or given sports instruction to female people. Female Q angles are a main reason teen girls and women are especially vulnerable to certain kinds of injuries in sports. My own female Q angles are a main reason I needed surgery in my 20s to correct injuries done to my knees from skiing and running in my youth.

Female Q angles are pretty important in human labor and childbirth too. The scorn and contempt you show regarding female Q angles makes you seem like not just a misogynist, but like a raving MRA. Do you show your own mother and gran such disrespect?

I dunno what "transvestigation" is - never heard of it.

Also everything you said about organs is just averages?

Yes, the stuff I said about organs are just averages. But there are no overlaps between the male and female averages I mentioned. In other words, when I said that male hearts and lungs are 25-38% and 10-12% larger and more powerful than the same organs in females, the bottom on of the male average is still 25% and 10% above the top of the female average.

I have faith that we'll figure out how to alter a lot of those in time, but I'm mainly dysphoric about stuff on the outside.

I think you would benefit a great deal if you considered why your unhappiness is mainly "about stuff on the outside." I think you might feel a lot less "dysphoric" if you stopped focusing and fixating on surface and paid more attention to substance.

Also big pharma formulations, u know a lot of dosing is community sourced right? A ton of us are obvi very invested in what we're taking and often it's us telling doctors because many just don't know the standards or the standards are, well, substandard. The actual hormone I take is bioidentical to what's produced by the body

Where are the ingredients coming for the "community sourced" hormone formulations you say you and other TW take? Please detail the sourcing and processes that go into their manufacture. Trace the supply chain from start to finish.

The actual hormone I take is bioidentical to what's produced by the body

How do you know? And to whose body exactly are you speaking of when you say it's "biodentical to what's produced by the body"?

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-15T18:18:41+00:00

testosterone could very well allow some to compete against cis men in many sports.

We know this isn't true because of widespread doping that's occurred in sports over many decades. The GDR in particular ran a program in the 1960s, 70s and 80s in which large numbers of female athletes took exogenous testosterone regularly throughout their tween, teen and adult years. The androgenized female athletes won all the top prizes and broke records in many women's events such as Olympic swimming, but they never came close to performing anywhere near the levels of the elite males in their sports.

Florence Griffith Joyner was believed to have been doping on androgens when she set her world records in women's sprints in the 1980s. For 33 years, no female broke her records in the 100m or 200m. But since the year 2000 alone, more than 3,600 males have run faster than her 100m record.

https://twitter.com/fondofbeetles/status/1156542238777851904?lang=en

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-15T17:43:17+00:00

It's called milk you know.

Y'all literally believe we're disgusting abominations huh?

No it's not milk. Not everything that comes out of a nipple is milk. Both males and females can have all sorts of discharge from the nipples that need evaluation by a HCP.

Nipple discharge is the commonly-used medical term. There's nothing disgusting about it - that's your word choice, not mine. People of both sexes who have nipple discharge are human beings in need of medical evaluation. You're the one equating having nipple discharge with being "disgusting abominations," not me.

Nipple discharge refers to any fluid that seeps out of the nipple of the breast.

Nipple discharge during pregnancy and breast-feeding is normal. Nipple discharge happens less commonly in women who aren't pregnant or breast-feeding. It may not be cause for concern, but it's wise to have it evaluated by a doctor to be sure.

Men who experience nipple discharge under any circumstances should be evaluated.

One or both breasts may produce a nipple discharge, either spontaneously or when you squeeze your nipples or breasts. Nipple discharge may look milky, clear, yellow, green, brown or bloody.

Discharge that isn't milk comes out of your nipple through the same ducts that carry milk. The discharge can involve a single duct or multiple ducts. The consistency of nipple discharge can vary — it may be thick and sticky or thin and watery.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/symptoms/nipple-discharge/basics/definition/sym-20050946

In males especially, nipple discharge needs to be investigated urgently. Because it's often a sign of cancer.

Fluid leaking from one or both nipples is called nipple discharge. Discharge from a man's breast is not normal and should always be checked by a doctor.

Nipple discharge may be a symptom of an infection, a side effect of a medicine, or maybe a symptom of breast cancer.

Nipple discharge occurs when fluid leaks out of your nipple. Sometimes it just happens, and sometimes it happens only when you squeeze your nipple. It can happen in both of your nipples or only one. The color and consistency of the discharge depends on what’s causing it. Nipple discharge in a man should always be evaluated by a doctor.

When he is born, a man’s breasts contain the same tissue and milk ducts as a woman’s, but because they are exposed to male hormones instead of female hormones during puberty, they become mostly fat instead of growing bigger. Some of the tissue and milk ducts are left though, so many of the causes of nipple discharge are the same in men and women.

Nipple discharge doesn’t happen very often in men. When it does happen, it’s very important that you see your doctor because it may be a sign that you have breast cancer.

https://www.healthline.com/health/nipple-discharge-in-males

Fluid leaking from one or both nipples is called nipple discharge. Discharge from a man's breast is not normal and should always be checked by a doctor. Nipple discharge may be a symptom of an infection, a side effect of a medicine, or maybe a symptom of breast cancer.

Treatment depends on what is causing the nipple discharge. You may need more tests to find out the cause.

https://www.healthline.com/health/nipple-discharge-in-males

Lots of women have had discharge coming from our nipples that we've had to have checked out by a doctor. This happens even to breastfeeding mothers. Because when women breastfeed for any length of time, it's common to get cracked nipples that bacteria can enter and to develop at least one breast infection as a result.

Heck, you know that men have lactated before right? Without any of the hormonal interventions that would make it way easier for a trans woman to.

No, I don't know that men have lactated before, LOL. I do know, however, that in the 19th and 20th centuries, some white Western travel writers and students of anthropology told some anecdotes about "exotic" peoples in far away lands were some men provided comfort for their babies by holding them to their bare chests and the babies sucked on their nipples. And the tellers of these tales decided to describe the men in these few stories as lactating and breastfeeding. But that doesn't mean the men actually were lactating.

Babies are endowed with a strong urge to suck - and as a result, they suck on lots of things: fingers, clothing, pacifiers, bibs, long hanks of hair, the corner of a washcloth or towel - their own hands and fingers, and even their own toes. Given the chance, babies will suck on their father's nipples when snuggled up against their naked chests. My kids did that with their father. It doesn't mean the men in these cases are lactating and nursing. Just as when a baby sucks on a pacifier, it doesn't mean the pacifier is issuing milk and providing nutrition and immunity.

BTW, if men could lactate and breastfeed, I'd be all for it. The father of my children would have loved to have breastfed - and like many women, I happily would have let him share the job of breastfeeding, or take it over entirely.

because when we do anything that's totally normal for a mother to do it's abuse just because we're trans I forgot about that detail x(

It's not normal for a mother to write articles or go on social media bragging that the first time we held our newborns in our arms and put them to our breasts, we experienced the greatest sexual arousal of our lives. I've heard and read lots of women discuss their experiences giving birth and putting baby to breast - and I have never, ever heard or read any say it gave them the female equivalent of a raging boner. I have only heard and read this sort of thing from TW.

At any rate, please stop being so cavalier about the breastfeeding of human newborns. The survival, health and emotional wellbeing of innocent infants is at issue here. You're really not doing your side any favors by showing that you couldn't care less about the newborns whose health and wellbeing are being put at risk by the TW you extoll - all for the purpose of providing selfish TW with validation and affirmation of their gender identities, and sexual thrills after their female partners have gone through the arduous, draining and often terrifying process of human labor and childbirth.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-15T16:13:55+00:00

there are literally forums where trans women have figured out how to do so. There have been trans women who have breastfed.

No, some TW have taken drug regimens to cause them to develop some kind of nipple discharge while their wives were pregnant. A couple of these TW say they pumped the nipple discharge out, stored it, and later put it into bottles and forced the bottles into the mouths of hungry newborn babies who being babies with no other choice, ended up sucking the nipple discharge down. Some TW have said they put their newborn babies to their nipples and for a few moments their helpless newborn babies sucked on their nipples and in the process presumably ingested some of whatever the discharge coming out of the nipples was.

One TW who was written up in a medical case report claimed to have fed a newborn from the TW's breasts exclusively for 6 weeks - and that the baby thrived, and the baby's pediatrician heartily approved. But the doctors who wrote up the case report were gender clinic doctors with no medical expertise in obstetrics, postpartum maternity, neonatal care or lactation - and apparently no personal life experience with, or even a clue about, the care and tending of babies, either. The doctors who wrote up the case report never saw TW's baby, spoke to the baby's mother, or checked with the baby's pediatrician. For all they knew, there might not have been any baby or pregnant wife at all.

But a key fact about all these stories of supposed medical miracles is that NO scientific analysis was done of the fluid that came out of the nipples of the TW in any of the cases. Therefore, there is no evidence at all of what exactly was in the nipple discharge. The nipple discharge could have been simply pus. Most definitely it was full of the heavy-duty drugs the TW had been ingesting to stimulate nipple discharge - one of which is a drug explicitly barred in the USA for use by breastfeeding women because of the negative impacts on the health of the children. Negative impacts which the FDA says can include heart failure and death.

But whatever was oozing out of the nipples of the TW in those real or apocryphal cases, I would bet my house that it was neither colostrum nor breastmilk.

If there were any chance the nipple discharge of these TW were breastmilk or colostrum, then surely the TW and their doctors would have arranged for lab analysis to prove once and for all that it was. After all, lab analysis is not difficult or costly to do. It's done all the time nowadays.

For many years, milk banks have been testing donor milk for pathogens and to ascertain it contains the customary and necessary nutrients https://milkbank.org/faq/

A number of commercial labs now also provide of at-home kits that make getting an analysis of breastmilk easy as pie.

https://lactationlab.com/collections/breast-milk-test-kits/products/basic-test-kit

https://www.mymilklab.com/mmes/nutrition

Given how easy it is to do a thorough analysis of breast milk and all other kinds of nipple discharge, don't you find it curious that no one bothered to do it in these cases? After all, proving that what issued from the breasts of TW in these cases was colostrum and breastmilk identical to what women make - and proving that it was totally sufficient to meet the nutritional and immunity needs of newborns - would be a huge win for the QT and TRA side. It would also give TW the kind of gender validation and affirmation that the T community seeks, holds so dear and is always demanding that others provide (or else). So it seems rather telling that no one bothered to do any lab analysis. Since TP and their doctors put so much faith in the wonders of modern medical science, it's odd that taking a sample to a lab never occurred to a single person involved in any of these tales.

Also, just for the record, many people believe that the TW who claim they have breastfed their newborns actually were engaging in clearcut abuse of the babies involved. None of the TW who have engaged in this activity and have written about it or spoken to the press about it, or have been written up as medical case reports, said they were motivated by wanting to do what's best for the child. On the contrary, all said they did it for personal gratification, "the experience" and "validation" and "affirmation" of their gender identities and their "femininity." Moreover, one TW who wrote about the experience for The Stranger bragged very openly that "she" found it very sexual arousing - the biggest turn-on of "her" life, in fact - and encouraged other TW to do it for the sexual thrills. As a result, many women feel this novel form of newborn "child care" that TW have invented constitutes not just child abuse, but child sex abuse too.

In response to me saying,

there are still many differences at the cellular level

Your response is

Who the heck cares? The tissue level is identical

Really? How can the tissue be identical when tissue is made up of cells?

what's important is that my receptors behave in a way that lets my breasts be breasts, and they do.

Okay, then. But can you share exactly what you mean when you say your receptors let your "breasts be breasts"?

BTW, perhaps it's my twisted mind, but the phrase "let breasts be breasts" immediately reminded me of the oft-heard expression, "boys will be boys."

Anyways, no one GC would dispute that males have breasts. Lots of men have sizable breasts - just go visit any beach and you'll see. We just say there are functional differences between male and female breasts. Just as there are functional differences between the breasts of a woman who has never had a baby and a woman who has, and there are especially marked differences between the breasts of a woman who has recently given birth and one who has not.

In fact, there are marked differences in women's breasts over the course of our lives, and depending on our childbearing status. My own breasts are very different now than they were at 18 and 35. When I was pregnant and breastfeeding, my breasts were different to how they were before then and the way they've been since I weaned. Now that I'm past menopause age, my breasts aren't what they once were looks-wise, either. I have a hunch that when it comes to meeting male standards of what breasts should look like to be considered sexually attractive and "hot and sexy" by men and boys, your breasts probably fit the bill far, far better than mine.

GC women also say that when male human beings take hormone formulations that result in them developing visible breasts that the whole world can see with the naked eye, and which might look similar or identical to the breast tissue of some women when viewed in medical imaging, it still doesn't make them women.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-15T15:28:07+00:00

This article explains some differences,

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5010345/ Such as the distinct lack of lobules. There is no evidence that estrogen causes the formation of lobules. There are mountains of evidence that the growth of breast tissue in males with excess estrogen is gynecomastia.

Generally, males do not have lobules. But some males with breast cancer have been found to have partially developed lobules. It's very rare, but it has happened.

One theory is that genetic factors cause the male androgen receptors in the breast tissue of some males to "express" in ways similar to estrogen receptors. Another theory is that during male mini puberty of infancy some male babies either make amounts of estrogen and progesterone that are higher than typical, or they respond to the normal amounts of E and P they make in atypical ways. Yet another theory is that for a time in infancy some males have excess aromatization that causes them to convert some of the massive amounts of T that baby boys produce during male mini puberty of infancy into estrogen. But no one knows.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-15T15:06:06+00:00

Why would excess estrogen cause lobular growth in men with gender identity and regular gyno in men without it?

Good question. Maybe it's the head tilt, the pronouns insisted upon, or way the way the breast tissue bounces when going up and down stairs. TW frequently say on social media that the bouncing of their breast tissue makes them ecstatic with gender euphoria, but bog standard guys with gynecomastia are far less thrilled by all the jiggling their own breast tissue does.

Then again, the explanation could also be that the claims being made here are simply not true.

Since male breast tissue is rudimentary, it usually does not differentiate and undergo lobule formation unless exposed to increased concentrations of endogenous or exogenous estrogen.

The Differences between Male and Female Breast Cancer, 2010

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-15T14:29:37+00:00

Both the papers you linked to are about the kinds of pathologies that HCPs need to be aware of and look out for when doing imaging of breast tissue of TW who take exogenous estrogen. The fact that some TW who've had breast imaging show "development of ducts, lobules and acini" that on film or on screen appear "histologically identical" to some women doesn't mean they are capable of performing the same function, which is to make milk.

Pseudolactational changes have also been described

Just because the authors of this paper say "pseudolactational changes" in the breast tissue of TW have been "described" by some doctors doesn't mean this breast tissue is lactational tissue. It doesn't mean this tissue has lactated or can lactate. It means the total opposite, in fact. The clue is in the "pseud" part of "pseudolactational." Pseudo means "not genuine; spurious or sham."

Also, the first paper you cite itself says that the development of the specific kinds of tissue in the breasts that has been observed in some TW through imaging, and which you are so focused on, is the kind of development that occurs in females early in puberty, but only early in puberty. The tissue observed in TW has not reached the level of development seen in females who are in the final phase of puberty known as Tanner Stage 5.

Plus, not all breast experts would agree that the sort of tissue development that the HCPs who do breast imaging and who wrote the first paper say they have observed in some TW on exogenous hormone formulations have never been found in bog-standard males who don't take the same sorts of drugs:

Male breast pathology has a similar diversity as is seen in women. Although lobular carcinomas were not thought to occur in men because of the normally absent terminal lobular unit, several reports have identified both in situ and invasive lobular carcinoma.16,100,101 Virtually every histologic entity described in women has occurred in men.

"Gynecomastia" in The Breast, 2-Volume Set, Expert Consult Online and Print (Fourth Edition), 2009

Since male breast tissue is rudimentary, it usually does not differentiate and undergo lobule formation unless exposed to increased concentrations of endogenous or exogenous estrogen.

Because of the [usual] lack of lobules in the male breast, lobular carcinoma [in males who don't identify as trans and don't take exogenous estrogens] is very uncommon (1%), but has been reported in the literature.

The Differences between Male and Female Breast Cancer, 2010

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/male-breast

Another issue is that imaging technology only goes so far and is limited in what it reveals. For example, when I had a concerning mass in one of my breasts, and a tumor in my head, the doctors who treated me guessed what the growths were made of - but they couldn't be sure until they actually took a biopsy of my breast mass, and removed the tumor from head, then sent the tissue to a pathology lab for thorough examination. In the case of both my breast mass and my cranial tumor, the doctors' guesses based on what they saw in the imaging turned out to be wrong. (ETA: these events in my medical history were separate, and did not occur at the same time. The times when I had a tumor in my head that had to be removed surgically and I had a breast mass requiring biopsy were years apart.)

The point is: even though males and females can and do develop breast tissues and pathology that can appear identical when viewed through imaging technology, there are still many differences at the cellular level. For example, the vast majority of the hormone receptors in male breast tissue will be male androgen receptors whilst the majority of the hormone receptors in female breast tissue will be female estrogen receptors and progesterone receptors. Yes, males have estrogen and receptors in their breast tissue too, as they do in other parts of their bodies. Moreover, in males who develop certain breast cancers, many of the male androgen receptors that are predominant in number will "express" in ways that cause them to behave a lot like female estrogen receptors. Yet at the same time, the male receptors that behave somewhat like female receptors will play a different role in male and female breast cancer even when the cancer is of the same type.

Scientific understanding of male and female hormone receptors is still in early stages. But what is clear from human and animal research is that whilst both sexes have androgen receptors, estrogen receptors and progesterone receptors (as well as receptors for other hormones), the ARs, ERs and PRs of males and females are different in nature, location, number, expression and function - and when hormone receptors are affected by genetic mutations, the impact of the same exact mutation on the affected receptors will be different depending on the person's sex.

Finally, the focus on breast development - on what a TW's breast tissue might look like to a casual observer on the street or what it might look like in medical imaging - is beside the point. Although human breasts serve a reproductive purpose that is extremely important, human breasts are still secondary sex characteristics. Lots of women have all sorts of breast anomalies. Lots of women have issues with their breast anatomy that makes it difficult or impossible for them to breastfeed. Lots of women have had one or both breasts removed due to breast cancer. But none of that has any affect on our sex. Many males including a majority of TW tend to see breasts as defining characteristics of women - in fact, many see breasts as women's single most important and most defining characteristic. But women don't see ourselves and each other that way.

The difference between how TW and women regard women's breasts has been illustrated on a number of Mumsnet threads where TW have expressed their belief that women size up and rate one another according to breast size, and that we see women with large breasts as being more genuinely female than women with small or absent breasts. The women of Mumsnet were aghast at this preposterous view.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-15T13:27:08+00:00

What? You can consent to riding a rollercoaster or going skydiving right?

In the USA, to go skydiving with a professional, properly-insured skydiving operation you have to be 18.

Jazz Jennings was 11 when Jazz's parents put the child on "puberty blockers" and 17 when they had Jazz undergo genital surgeries.

The rules for roller coasters vary, but most roller coasters require riders to have reached a certain height. All prohibit adults from riding if we are wearing a sling, snuggy or other kind carrier on our chests, hips or backs with a baby or young child in it. Some roller coasters require smaller-height children to be accompanied by an adult.

All sports activities and amusement parks practice various kinds of gatekeeping for safety reasons. None of them have the total lack of precautionary restrictions the way you are implying.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-15T12:53:49+00:00

It's very possible, humans are not as sexually dimorphic as many other mammals. Hormones control and influence a lot and we are only getting better at changing people's phenotype. The shape of people's bodies, our sex characteristics, the hormones we run on, that's all biology, all changeable to a growing extent.

If humans are not as sexually dimorphic as many other mammals, how come that even amongst those in trans community who have gone to the greatest lengths using Big Pharma hormone formulations (and sometimes surgeries) to alter their outward appearance to give the impression they have secondary sex characteristics of the opposite sex, only TPs who are biologically female get pregnant and have babies?

If humans are not as sexually dimorphic as many other mammals, how come that even amongst those in trans community who have gone to the greatest lengths using Big Pharma hormone formulations (and sometimes surgeries) to alter their outward appearance to give the impression they have secondary sex characteristics of the opposite sex, how come male TPs are winning and setting records in girls' and women's sports but female TPs are not winning and setting records in boys' and men's sports? How come male TPs are bumping girls and women off teams, out of competition, off awards podiums and out of record books - but not a single female TP has done the same to any boys or men? How come numerous male TPs have taken top place and won titles and trophies in women's and girls' sports, but no female TPs have managed to distinguish themselves similarly in men's and boys' sports. Is it because trans boys and trans men don't try as hard as trans girls and trans women?

The shape of people's bodies, our sex characteristics, the hormones we run on, that's all biology, all changeable to a growing extent.

Yes, some fat can be redistributed, but there is no way to make a male skeleton into a female on, or vice versa. There is no way to change male kidneys into female kidneys. Males who suppress T and take estradiol still have hearts and lungs that are 25-38% and 10-12% larger and more powerful respectively than female people of equivalent height, weight and age - and male twitch fibers, male tendons, male airway cells, male explosiveness. Females who take exogenous testosterone will get deeper voices, facial hair, male-pattern balding and much higher rates of CV disease - but they still will have female pelvises, and thus female Q angles; female hearts, lungs, hands and feet and all the rest.

Also, you don't seem to understand the difference between primary and secondary sex characteristics. Or between outwardly appearing to be something and actually being it. Used to be, learning about Potemkin villages, animals changing coloration, trompe-l'œil, subterfuge, FX in media were standard parts of growing up. Used to be, most people grew up to understand that surface is not substance, illusion and reality are not the same thing, and there's often a major difference between the outer packaging and what's inside. Did you really reach adulthood not learning any of this?

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-14T22:56:00+00:00

I'm not asking you to prove you're a woman, you simply are, that's enough for me if you tell me that's how you feel and identify. Like you can claim it's based on biology but really it's based on you feeling that your biology defines you and is meaningful.

This is so offensive. You are saying that women are not women when we are asleep, under anesthesia, drugged senseless, dead drunk, suffering from Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia, with serious brain damage due to stroke. You are saying that women with the misfortune to have been born with severely low IQ are not women. You are saying that women on their deathbeds whose cognitive abilities and self-awareness have vanished due to CO2 narcosis, the brain and body shutting because of the ravages of terminal illness, and/or because of heavy sedation with morphine, are not women. You are saying that the majority of the world's women are not women because they have who have never heard of the theories of "gender identity" that you hold dear, and which you imperialistically and mistakenly assume are universal and you erroneously think describe something all human beings experience and agree on.

So all the men who have slipped women mickeys and drugs like Qualudes and Rohypnol in order to rape us - none of those men are guilty of raping women, because the at the time the women were unconscious and thus could not "identify as" and "feel like" women?

Women are not women because we feel we are women. It's because we are female. That's it.

Being a woman is not a feeling, an identity, a state of mind or a personal accomplishment. It's just a simple, basic, verifiable fact of material reality. Being a woman is not a matter of self-perception. A person with no capacity for self-perceptions of any kind can still be a woman. All she has to do is be a human who is age 18 or over and female.

I am as much a woman when I am asleep and under anesthesia as when I am awake and my brain is firing on all cylinders. Please stop insulting me and the large portion of the human race who are adult human females with your sexist, misogynistic bollocks. Stop telling women that we have no material reality, that we are merely projections of male fantasies and imaginary ideas in the minds of misogynists.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-14T22:19:01+00:00

I'm not going to use the men's room (where I'm way more likely to both be uncomfortable and make others uncomfortable) just because someone might be uncomfortable

Sorry, but when I read that and your other statements, the message I think you are telling me and other women is:

I am not going to use the men's room where I as a male who wants to be a woman am likely to be uncomfortable myself, and where I think I might make other males uncomfortable, just because some female people might feel uncomfortable and unsafe with males in women's restrooms. Because as a male, I believe that males have a right to not to feel uncomfortable ever, but female people do not have any such right - nor do female people have any right to safety, privacy or dignity, either.

Therefore, for the sake of my own personal comfort and the comfort of other members of my sex, I am going to use women's restrooms whenever I want. If this causes some women and girls to feel unsafe, uneasy, uncomfortable, intruded upon and disrespected - tough noogies.

If my using women's restrooms means women and girls from certain religions and cultures such as observant Muslims and orthodox Jews no longer will be able to use women's restrooms and thus will have no place to tend to their intimate bodily needs outside their homes, and they thus no longer will be able participate in life outside the home as they could until recently, tough noogies.

If my use of women's restrooms means women's restrooms become inhospitable and off limits to women and girls in certain life circumstances or dealing with certain female-only physical issues that cause women and girls to feel especially vulnerable and to really, really need privacy from males - such as menstruation, pregnancy vomiting, pregnancy hemorrhoids and rectal bleeding, post-birth or termination vaginal bleeding and clotting, heavy vaginal bleeding due to fibroids or menopausal flooding, miscarriage, leaking breasts and amnio fluid, urinary and fecal incontinence due to aging and a history of childbirth, cystitis, vaginal yeast infections requiring application of medications, disrobing to wash off bloodstains, breastmilk and baby vomit from their clothing - tough noogies.

If women voice their objections to me and other males using women's restrooms, I will tell them

it's just how things are.

And as the coup de grace, I will add

It's allyship.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-14T19:50:04+00:00

The vast majority of males who are trans aka "transwomen" are heterosexual, though - meaning attracted to women/girls. And they develop their opposite sex identity in adolescence or adulthood.

Yes, a majority (about two-thirds) of persons who develop sex/gender distress in childhood prior to puberty of adolescence will grow up to be same-sex attracted (gay, lesbian or bisexual). However, most people who have sex/gender dysphoria in childhood before puberty outgrow it in the course of going through adolescence. The exact numbers vary depending on the study, but all the longterm studies that followed people from childhood into adulthood have found that the majority - 73% to more than 92% - desist from having dysphoria as they mature physically, emotionally, cognitively and sexually. Out of every 10 kids who want to be the opposite sex as young children, most will have lost that desire by their mid or late teens - and only 1 or 2 will carry that desire into their 20s. Those who persist in their 20s often outgrow it after their brains have reached full development at 25 or so.

Gender dysphoria that develops in adolescence or adulthood, however, is entirely different to GD that develops in childhood before puberty - and in looking at later-onset GD, patients/people affected have to be divided into two distinct groups by biological sex. Males who develop gender dysphoria during or after puberty and in adulthood do so for very different reasons than females who develop gender dysphoria at the same ages and developmental stages. In fact, "gender dysphoria" in the two sexes is a completely different phenomenon.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-14T16:56:17+00:00

A lot of those problems are also the problems of trans women and girls. Not biological ones, but the misogyny that's directed at everyone because of that biology or the assumption of it. We should be helping each other solve that and for the most part trans people are pro bodily autonomy unlike the religious right who so many GCs seem to be fine allying with.

This is forced teaming. It's a tactic abusers use.

You and I share common interests as human beings, and I am sure we are aligned on various political and social issues. But because we are different sexes, there are many experiences we do not share - and many places where our interests diverge.

You belong to the sex that for millennia has oppressed and abused my sex. I interpret the kind of attitudes you display as just more of the same sort of arrogant, selfish, male supremacist male entitlement that men and boys have been displaying for tens of thousands of years to lord it over women and girls, intimidate us, dehumanize us, bully us, keep us down and let us know that in their/your eyes we don't matter nearly as much as males do. I experience the intrusive, sex-appropriating and colonizing behaviors you are engaging as more of the same sorts of abusiveness that your sex has been dishing out to my sex for millennia.

You can tell yourself that you are a victim of misogyny until you are blue in the face. It won't make it so. Nor will it change the fact that I and many others think the attitudes that most males who call themselves TW have towards women and girls, the way you see and treat us, and the demands you are making of us, epitomize misogyny.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-14T04:53:46+00:00

It's not just Cox's height, though. Cox is large all over. Large head, shoulders. Just a big person who tends to dwarf a lot of other people. Men as well as women, but especially the women.

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/actress-laverne-cox-and-her-mother-gloria-cox-attend-the-news-photo/614477874

https://www.zimbio.com/photos/Laverne+Cox/Elliot+Page/LV9bDS2XqIA/25th+Annual+GLAAD+Media+Awards+Backstage

https://m.imdb.com/name/nm2914715/mediaviewer/rm2887365377?context=default

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/laverne-cox-and-rita-moreno-attend-the-13th-annual-outfest-news-photo/865258976?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/laverne-cox-and-rosario-dawson-attend-tribeca-tv-festivals-news-photo/1038129590?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pictured-laverne-cox-and-rosanna-arquette-news-photo/1006191860?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sarah-jessica-parker-and-laverne-cox-attend-the-planned-news-photo/953564194?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/trudie-styler-and-laverne-cox-attend-the-2017-outfest-los-news-photo/816110678?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/laverne-cox-and-marlee-matlin-attend-the-academy-museum-of-news-photo/1345723686?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/lisa-kudrow-laverne-cox-and-dan-bucatinsky-attend-the-who-news-photo/968046890?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/adrienne-bailon-laverne-cox-and-jeannie-mai-attend-the-news-photo/854596658?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/actresses-elizabeth-mclaughlin-gabrielle-carteris-awkwafina-news-photo/1072209364?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/actresses-gabrielle-carteris-laverne-cox-and-awkwafina-news-photo/1072209258?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/laverne-cox-and-maxine-waters-attend-families-belong-news-photo/988397030?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/todays-guest-include-laverne-cox-and-meghan-mccain-on-news-photo/457233328?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cupp-and-jason-biggs-guest-co-host-kate-hudson-and-emmy-news-photo/452546272?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/netflix-chief-content-officer-and-co-ceo-ted-sarandos-and-news-photo/1392865875?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/co-ceo-and-chief-content-officer-at-netflix-ted-sarandos-news-photo/1392853807?adppopup=true

https://www.glaad.org/blog/listen-your-children-access-hollywood-speaks-laverne-coxs-mother-gloria-backstage-glaadawards

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dwayne-johnson-and-laverne-cox-attend-the-peoples-choice-news-photo/1357819947?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/laverne-cox-abd-jussie-smollett-attend-the-26th-annual-news-photo/472808126?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/co-ceo-and-chief-content-officer-at-netflix-ted-sarandos-news-photo/1392844906?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/jimmy-kimmel-live-airs-every-weeknight-at-11-35-p-m-est-and-news-photo/614699128?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/darren-criss-and-laverne-cox-attend-the-25th-annual-screen-news-photo/1090492998?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/actor-wilson-cruz-and-laverne-cox-celebrate-at-beverly-news-photo/965870886?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/news-photo/1095510162?adppopup=true

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/if-it-aint-burke-dont-fix-it-episode-405-pictured-laverne-news-photo/514345636?adppopup=true

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-14T00:49:44+00:00

Tell me, who am I supposed to ask for permission to be a woman? You?

I know I'm a woman

Sorry, but even you don't sound convinced by your own rhetoric.

Being a woman isn't like gaining entry to a club. It's a matter of biology. Nature/evolution decided your sex when your mother's egg and your father's sperm merged. It had nothing whatsoever to do with me. Neither I nor any other woman or person on earth can grant you permission to be a woman just like none of us can wave a magic wand, say abracadabra and grant you three wishes.

Your sex and your unhappiness with your sex are not my problem. Nor are they the problem of the rest of the world's women and girls to deal with and solve for you. I am truly sorry for your suffering - I genuinely am - but the fact is, lots of people suffer with all sorts of psychological and physical problems that are just as bad or actually far worse than gender dysphoria.

If you genuinely want to find happiness, you've got to find a way to deal with your problems that doesn't require all of society be totally re-arranged just to suit you. You've got to find a way that doesn't demand that everyone else in the world help you feel feel better by constantly denying reality, denying our own perceptions, watching what we say and changing how we say it, biting our tongues, telling lies and forever walking on eggshells.

If you truly want to find happiness, you've got to find a way that doesn't require that the female half of the human forfeit our own safety, privacy, dignity, comfort and mental health for you.

Women and girls are not here on earth for your convenience and use. Women and girls need female-only spaces for ourselves for our own reasons.

The solution to your dilemmas as regards peeing goes is to campaign for additional spaces for people who don't want to use the single-sex spaces consistent with their/your own sex. The solution for your larger issues about social acceptance and other people being comfortable around you is to campaign for other members of your sex to be kinder and more tolerant toward nonconforming males.

I will support you in both campaigns. But women and girls have enough problems of our own to deal with. Moreover, the social changes and accommodations you and other gender identity ideologues are demanding create more problems for girls and women and make the material reality of our own lives much worse. It's unreasonable for males like yourself to ask and expect women and girls to give up the hard-won spaces, safeguards, services, sports and rights that generations of women fought tooth and nail for over hundreds years just because now in the 21st century some very entitled people with luxury beliefs have developed self-image and identity issues.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-13T19:49:03+00:00

Idk what to tell u if you can't tell the difference between drag or panto as a performance and trans people wearing normal clothes and makeup.

I didn't say I personally couldn't tell the difference. I just gave examples of situations where males might be dressing and trying to appear "as women" and there'd be no way for someone who casually encounters them briefly to tell what their motives and reasons are. A stranger could guess, but there'd be no way to know for sure without inquiring.

Also, the fact of the matter is, there's often a huge discrepancy between what many male "trans people" regard as "wearing normal clothes and makeup" and what the rest of the world thinks is "wearing normal clothes and makeup."

For example, lots of TW dress in OTT, hyper sexualized ways; they wear outfits and makeup that most women and girls would not wear, unless those women and girls are porn actors, strippers, street prostitutes, Only Fans workers, Kardashians or entertainers like the rap artists like Cardi B or singer and dancer Jennifer Lopez.

Similarly, many middle-aged and older TW dress in ways that actual female people the same age do not - that we'd never be caught dead in, in fact. I've seen lots of TW in their 50s, 60s and 70s out and about in very short mini skirts, thigh highs and revealing tops that the vast majority of women their age would never, ever wear because the stage in our lives when we could get away with such a look ended many years ago. Similarly, some older TW like Sophie Grace Chappell and that infamous Stephonknee person who "identifies as" a child of 6 wear the clothing, makeup and hairstyles of little girls - Mary Janes, ankle socks, pig tails, party dresses with puffy sleeves, and pouffed-out skirts with crinolines.

I think most trans people have no trouble saying that there are scenarios where trans women can be distinguished. Just that for passing trans people what would be required to make that distinction would violate our privacy and you don't have a right to do that.

Maybe some trans people say that, but a lot of of TP and other gender identity ideologues refuse to acknowledge that there are any scenarios where TW can be distinguished. In fact, many TP and their allies say it's transphobic to acknowledge that some TW are clockable as males - even when they are naked and waving their penises and balls in girls' and women's faces. That's what happened in the Wi Spa case. Women who objected to seeing a naked adult male with a semi-erect penis in the women-only area of the spa were told time and again that serial sex offender Darren Merragher is a woman and thus Merragher's semi-hard penis on display was/is a woman's penis, because Merragher "identifies as" a TW - and TWAW.

It's also happened in the case of the many TW whose mug shots and other photos have appeared in the press due to them being arrested or convicted of violent crimes like murder, attempted murder, assaults with axes, hammers and knives and sex crimes like rape, possession of images showing children being sexually abused, and indecent exposure. Trans people and allies constantly say that observing and declaring "that's not a woman" in the case of TPs convicted or accused of heinous crimes is just as bad an offense as the many murders, assaults, rapes and other sex crimes these TPs have committed. In fact, some TPs and their allies say that "misgendering" of TPs who've committed criminal acts against other people - including child sex abuse and the rape and murder of women - is a far worse offense than the horrible crimes they've committed.

Just that for passing trans people what would be required to make that distinction would violate our privacy and you don't have a right to do that.

But the scenario that Genderbender brought up was about a women's restroom. By going into such spaces, TW are violating the privacy - and jeopardizing the safety and denying the dignity - of female human beings. Where do you get the impression that you and other males like you have the right to do this?

That's a serious question. I think if you look into it, you'll find that the right that some males believe they have to use women's restrooms on account of their gender identity claims and gender presentation is a right that some males decided simply to declare and take for themselves, without ever bothering to ask women if it was okay with us. Now after the fact, males who arrogantly assumed that women's restrooms and other female spaces are theirs for the taking are finding out that lots of women are not okay with this kind of male interloping - and this discovery is causing you/them to feel outraged. It never occurred to you/them that women would push back and say "this is not your space, you do not belong here" because virtually none of you gave a moment's thought to the issue of how your actions would affect female people. In the calculations of most TW, the feelings and perspectives of actual women are never factored in, because most TW see us as objects, inferiors, and lowly service providers whose purpose in life is to center and cater to males - not as full-fledged human beings with needs and perspectives of our own who deserve rights as much as anyone else.

But even if TW had bothered to ask permission to horn in on female spaces, the fundamental problem is that especially as more and more people declare they are trans - and being trans has no concrete or fixed definition - it becomes harder and harder for the world to agree on exactly who counts as

passing trans people

Especially "passing trans women." However, the fact that you yourself use the phrase "passing trans people" shows that even you admit there are some who don't pass even in your own eyes. So the thorny issue at the heart of the matter remains: when people don't see eye to eye, whose perceptions count? Why should the idealized images that TW see when they gaze at themselves in their mirrors take precedence over what other people see when they encounter them out and about?

More to the point, why should the claims of male persons who say that they are now women be taken more seriously and given more weight and credence than the claims of actual women who say no they/you are not?

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-13T18:59:01+00:00

At the genetic level it may be the case the fetus starts as female, but that doesn't say anything about the target morphology of the adult version of the fetus. Human females are not just smaller, they have a different morphology. This gap is relatively recent in evolutionary timelines for humans.

When you say that in humans "the fetus starts as female," I think you mean embryo. A human embryo becomes a fetus at the time that gonadal differentiation occurs, which happens at 7-8 weeks.

Fetuses by definition will have male gonads, testes, or female gonads, ovaries. So the idea that in humans "the fetus starts as female" is nonsensical.

Also, your claim that "at the genetic level the fetus starts as female" gives the impression that during gestation in utero humans change DNA and sex chromosomes. This is not true. A human being's chromosomal sex, genetic sex and genetic profile is determined at conception. Some di novo mutations can occur when the first cells divide in the hours after sperm and egg merge and the blastocyst is forming, but the genetic sex of humans is set in stone from the get-go. It does not change as the blastocyst becomes an embryo, as the embryo grows into a fetus at week 7-8, or as the fetus develops from week 8 through 40.

It's not true that human embryos and their precursors, blastocysts, "start as female" either. Human embryos appear sexually undifferentiated when observed visually from the outside because they have not yet developed male or female gonads or the other urogenital and reproductive organs that are obvious to the eye. A male embryo who that not yet grown testes, penis, scrotum, prostate, vas deferens etc is NOT female; the embryo is merely an undeveloped male, or a male in primordial form.

When the cells of human embryos and blastocysts are examined with microscopes and other technologies that allow for a more accurate picture of what's happening, physical sex differences can be seen. In fact, marked physical sex differences in the cells of human blastocysts have been found just days after fertilization, at the time when the blastocyst is implanting in the uterine wall and begins to grow a placenta.

For the record: whether human fetuses have male or female external genitalia can be ascertained with 100% accuracy by sonograms taken from the exterior of pregnant women's abdomens at 14 weeks. Since full term pregnancy is 40 weeks, this means that the gonadal and genital sex of fetuses is easily discernible for the vast majority of the time that a fetus is a fetus.

Moreover, the genetic sex of human fetuses can be determined with 100% accuracy by testing a pregnant woman's blood drawn from the arm or finger in the standard way at 8-9 weeks of pregnancy; this common test is called the NIPT. The sex of a fetus can also be ascertained at 8-9 weeks of pregnancy by testing a tiny piece of the placenta taken in the invasive procedure called CVS (chorionic villi sampling). CVS has been in use since the mid-late 1980s; I personally had it when pregnancy more than 30 years ago.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-13T14:33:54+00:00

Genderbender asked GC people who use women's restrooms:

How would you react if you saw a trans woman in the women's restroom?

Or someone who appears to be a trans woman?

Both these questions are based on the assumption that GC users of women's restrooms (who are presumably female) can tell just by looking that TW are TW sometimes, often or always. If TW always passed, how would anyone else be able to discern that a TW seen in the ladies' loo is a TW and not a W?

The second question is based on the further assumption that it's sometimes, often or always impossible for observers to tell the difference between a TW and a male who is dressed "like a woman" for reasons other than gender identity. Such as because he's a drag queen or performer who does British-style panto; he's dressed up for a costume party or stag night; he's simply exploring and expressing his "feminine" side; he's wearing a disguise because he's on the lam as in "Some Like It Hot;" he is an autogynephile but one who does not actually "identify as" the opposite sex, like Grayson Perry; he's an attention-seeking "character" who's a bit of an oddball like Corporal Klinger; he's an attention-seeking entertainer trying to get media coverage; or he's a sexual predator who's decided to dress "like a woman" due to nefarious motives much like the ones that caused the Big Bad Wolf to put on grandmother's clothing in the story of Little Red Riding Hood.

If Genderbender didn't think GC women could tell the difference between TW and W at least some of the time, why would she have asked these questions? Clearly, Genderbender posed these questions after imagining in her head a scenario in a women's restroom where GC women see a person we can clearly clock as a TW, or as someone who appears to be a TW.

If Genderbender truly believed what the holy writ of the gender ideology creed says - which is that no one can tell that males who "identify as" female are not actually female without "looking in their pants" and testing their DNA - she wouldn't be conjuring up these sorts of scenarios in her mind's eye in the first place, and she'd have no reason to ask GC women what we'd do in the situation she clearly has invested time and energy watching unfold in her head.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-11T22:58:48+00:00

I saw Laverne Cox in person once. Seeing someone in 3 dimensions in the flesh is very different to seeing them in a still photo or on screen. IRL, I don't think Cox passes at all.

When photographed standing alone in a still shot, like in the famous TIME magazine cover, or when Cox is filmed or taped alone in a position where Cox isn't moving around too much, like in the recent video Cox did promoting a project on women's history, maybe a few people here and there might think Cox passes for a second or two. But when seen amongst other people, and especially when seen next to or near adult human females, Cox stands out like a proverbial sore thumb.

Cox is huge, with very broad shoulders, a very large head, giant hands and feet. Even when Cox is wearing the usually big head of store-bought, teased-up hair grown by impoverished, downtrodden girls and women in the third world, Cox's skull and the way Cox's head sits on Cox's neck are unmistakable tells that Cox is male - especially when Cox is seen in profile or partial profile rather than straight on from the front. Then when Cox gets moving on Cox's feet, there is no way anyone on earth would think that Cox has the gait, stride or foot plant of a female person.

I say none of this as diss on Cox. It's just that evolution has caused the males and females of our species to develop innumerable physical features that make it easy for most people to tell the sex of adolescents and adults pretty much instantly on first sight without any or much conscious thought. Due to evolution, our female socialization growing up, and years of lived experience always having to be on the alert, most women are really, really good at instantaneously sizing up and sussing out the sex of the adolescents and adults we encounter. Our safety depends on this skill.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-11T22:12:08+00:00

If their body is designed to produce small mobile gamates, they are male. If their body does or does not work properly is irrelevant. If their body is designed to produce large immoble gamates, they are female. If their body does or does not work properly is irrelevant.

Just to be clear: evolution has arranged things so only the bodies of human males are meant to have the capacity to produce small gametes, sperm, over the course of the whole life span from puberty of adolescence to death. Human females are meant to have the capacity to mature and release large gametes, ova, only for about 40 years of our lives, from menarche circa age 11 to menopause circa age 50.

An adult human female who can't generate gametes (or any gonadal hormones either) can't be assumed to have a body "that does not work properly," so it's inaccurate and unfair to use that kind of phrasing for members of the female sex. Most likely the body of such a woman works perfectly fine, it's just that she's probably 50 or older and thus has been through menopause - like 63 million women in the US today.

Moreover, during the phase of women's lives known as the "childbearing years" or our "reproductive prime," we can't and don't generate gametes all the time the way males do. From puberty through to old age, human males are constantly making sperm in vast amounts - typically millions of sperm each day. By contrast, during the approximately 40-year span of time (or less) when human females usually have the ability ovulate, we only generate and release a single gamete once every 28 days - an average of 13 a year.

So whereas the average human male in good health will produce billions of small gametes in his lifetime, a healthy human female will generate and release a much, much smaller number of large gametes in her life - about 500 in all.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-11T14:05:50+00:00

I have multiple reddit accounts and on one of them I used to regularly post on r/gendercynical a few years back and no one ever accused me of transphobia. I have never once been accused of transphobia in my life.

So? If you posted points you've made on this thread on social media sites frequented by TRAs, I suspect they'd call you transphobic in a flash.

Passing ultimately doesn't matter

Then why are you making such a big deal about it? You seem to divide TW into two groups based on your own personal assessments of whether they pass, as you demonstrate here:

Some trans woman do pass, like Jazz Jennings, Laverne Cox and MJ Rodriguez. Caitlyn Jenner doesn't pass but that's just my perception.

Seems you view Jennings, Cox and Rodriguez as having a more valid and legitimate claim to call themselves TW than Jenner does. That's transphobic because it runs counter to the QT commandment that says trans people are whomever and whatever they say they are.

Why do you give your own perceptions more credence than Jenner's claims? Why do you count your own perceptions at all in the case of Jenner or any other TW? According QT and trans dogma, not to believe the claims made about themselves by anyone who calls themselves trans is transphobic.

Moreover, to continue to have and to place trust in your own perceptions of TW when those perceptions cause you to regard some TW in ways that aren't exactly in synch with how they see themselves and they have said they want to be seen by others is not just deeply transphobic - it's arrogant and oppressive.

Your assessments that certain TW pass and others don't are transphobic and oppressive also because you are judging TW based on whether their outward appearance as you perceive it lives up to superficial aesthetic standards that you hold, but which the TW you are being judgmental toward might not hew to. In fact, the TW whom you declare "doesn't pass" might not just disagree with and reject the aesthetic standards you are judging them by - they might experience those standards as harmful and negating of their identities. A true ally would not be so judgy. A true ally would pay no attention whatsoever to how any/all TW appear in any circumstance. A true ally would never, ever have the nerve to believe her own eyes if those eyes spot even a glimmer of evidence that flies in the face of the dogma that all trans people are exactly who/what they claim to be and all TW are women.

In case it's not crystal clear: I am not saying that in my opinion some of the views you have expressed on this thread are transphobic. I'm just pointing out that according to QT and gender dogma they are.

a passing trans woman will of course not be questioned in the woman's restroom

How on earth do you know this?

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-10T22:46:36+00:00

The fact that you refer to trans women as "males" will more likely cause people to accuse you of transphobia.

Yeah, so? I've been called worse; and I can take it. It's you I was talking about. I thought appearing transphobic is something you'd want to avoid at all costs, and being accused of transphobia is something you might be concerned about.

Tellingly, you didn't address any of my points. Instead, you immediately brought up Keira Bell and tried to make it seem like the issue you raised is whether

someone like her in appearance and voice could be mistaken for a trans woman.

Which is ridiculous. Look at Bell's face, hands, feet, body shape, bone structure and the way Bell moves and walks.

Keira Bell is also totally beside the point in this particular convo, which you started. Because you specifically asked

GC: How would you react if you saw a trans woman in the women's restroom?

Or someone who appears to be a trans woman?

Now you say:

I think its obvious I'm referring to trans women who don't pass.

But I thought passing didn't matter? That trans people don't owe it to the world to do anything to change their appearance to try to pass as the opposite sex. Because everyone is just supposed to believe that trans people are whatever sex they say they are.

Also, since you brought up "passing": who decides who "passes"? Most males who identify as trans think and insist that they pass, but many female people like me disagree. Whose perception do you think should win out here?

The central point remains: the questions you raised are a tacit admission that you believe women (who are GC) can always, usually or frequently tell when males are in women's restrooms, no matter how those males identify or present. This goes against the fundamental part of the QT creed which says that none of us can ever tell because it's impossible for anyone to figure out if adult and post-pubescent males are actually male without "looking in their pants" and doing DNA tests.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-10T15:09:40+00:00

GC: How would you react if you saw a trans woman in the women's restroom?

Or someone who appears to be a trans woman?

Huh? These questions show you believe women can always, usually or frequently tell when males are in women's restrooms, no matter how those males identify or present. This stands in stark contrast to the standard QT party line, which is that none of us can ever tell.

The fact that you asked about

a trans woman in the women's restroom

And

someone who appears to be a trans woman

In the next breath also is an open acknowledgment that there's no way for women to know if a male is "genuinely trans" or not.

Genderbender, I hate to break it to you, but the questions you've posed would cause many to accuse you of transphobia.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-10T14:43:57+00:00

Matt Taibbi has a good article on his Substack that reviews the movie. Taibbi in his piece also discusses Walsh's politics, the pushback against gender ideology from GC feminists (he features Kara Dansky), the public positions of so-called "progressives" on so-called "trans rights," and what he believes is a growing discomfort amongst liberal Democratic Party voters with the extreme consequences of today's trans activism.

Taibbi has a sense that a lot of otherwise tolerant and "live and let live" types are now increasingly concerned by such developments as

the dramatic surge in the numbers of children, tweens, teens and young adults being labelled trans;
arrogant males like Lia Thomas being allowed to invade and dominate in women's and girls' sports, and then being given national media platforms to crow about their victories and complain how oppressed and victimized they are;
new, poorly-thought-out prison policies that place male convicts - including rapists, murderers and predators of women and girls - in women's correctional facilities where some of the male convicts have immediately taken the opportunity to sexually assault, rape, menace, verbally abuse, lord it over and generally frighten the pants off incarcerated women, policies that already have led to numerous lawsuits as well as to pregnancies.

MarkTwainiac · 2022-06-09T17:04:33+00:00

Thanks for the info.

MarkTwainiac