ISTM the reason is that (cis) men are pretty relaxed about the whole business.
The primary fear that I've heard expressed by cis men is that they might start dating an attractive woman only to end up finding that she's "actually" a man. You know, the whole Crying Game thing.
It's amongst (cis) women that the issue is more contentious, as the posts on Mumsnet and the feminist divisions over Germaine Greer would seem to demonstrate.
Greer is transphobe. One can be a feminist and still be an arsehole.
Colin Smith: But what role does genitalia have in defining you as a person?
What intrigues me is that genitalia appear important to the transgendered in that many are prepared to undergo intensive surgery to acquire representations of the equipment.
Colin Smith: But what role does genitalia have in defining you as a person?
What intrigues me is that genitalia appear important to the transgendered in that many are prepared to undergo intensive surgery to acquire representations of the equipment.
Yes, and as I said before I respect that. What I don't understand is this idea that one can become the opposite gender to that one was born with without changing one's genitalia. Which is why I'd be so interested to find out which aspects of manhood/womanhood are being considered more important.
Colin Smith: But what role does genitalia have in defining you as a person?
What intrigues me is that genitalia appear important to the transgendered in that many are prepared to undergo intensive surgery to acquire representations of the equipment.
For them it's important, but so what? For some people tattoos, or particular hairstyle, or tracing their ancestry to the 14th century is important. I don't understand why anyone would want an opinion on or expect a defence from people who want something different to you.
Yes, and as I said before I respect that. What I don't understand is this idea that one can become the opposite gender to that one was born with without changing one's genitalia. Which is why I'd be so interested to find out which aspects of manhood/womanhood are being considered more important.
Because one's biological sex and culturally defined subjectively experienced gender are two different things.
If I understand it, if a woman has a penis, it is a female penis, because the self definition does not depend on the physical assignment of sex/gender at birth (not sure how to navigate the two terms in this context). A man with a vagina or breasts has male parts. The separation of gender from sexuality.
Well, what do you mean by "male" and "female" and what are the characteristics you perceive yourself as having that define you as male?
I define it by physical biological characteristics, primarily genitalia.
That's sex, rather than gender.
I think that gender identity tends to get erased, if we focus on genitals, chromosomes, and so on. Well, some feminists argue for this, and then transgender disappears, or trans women are "really men".
Sex assigned at birth / anatomical sex - usually based on genitals, but may be chosen by the medics involved if the child is one of those born with ambiguous genitals;
Gender identity - our in built belief of our gender - whether we believe we are male, female or non-binary;
Gender expression - how we show our gender - dress, hairstyle, presentation;
Sexual attraction - homosexual, heterosexual, asexual
Transgendered people have a mismatch between their gender identity and their sex assigned at birth (SAAB), for whatever reason.
@Marvin the Martian -- How does your rigid (no pun intended) definition scheme work for people who are intersex -- say, somebody who has both a vagina AND a penis?
There's a problem with making an argument from the uncommon versus the common. Intersex is commonly quoted as 1.7%, which draws from a particular finding. It may be as low as 0.018%. Definitional problems. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12476264
Perhaps we as a society and as families and individuals need to stop defining people by their physical characteristics except where such characteristics lead to a diagnosis of a medical condition that directly affects a person's health.
Incidence, in 2007, was estimated to be 3.0 per 100,000 people aged over 15 in the UK, that is 1,500 people presenting for treatment of gender dysphoria. Data provided to GIRES by HM Revenues and Customs for 2010 confirm the upward trend. The number who had by then presented for treatment can be estimated to be 12,500. That represents a growth trend from 1998 of 11% per annum. At that rate, the number who have presented is doubling every 6 1/2 years.
and
The adults who present emerge from a large, mainly invisible, reservoir of people, who experience some degree of gender variance. They may number 300,000, a prevalence of 600 per 100,000, of whom 80% were assigned as boys at birth. However, the number would be nearly 500,000, a prevalence of 1,000 per 100,000 (1%), if the gender balance among gender variant people is equal, as seems increasingly likely.
and I suspect part of the moral outrage we are currently seeing is linked to this finding:
Nonetheless, presentation for treatment among youngsters is also growing rapidly and has the potential to accelerate if young people feel increasingly able to reveal their gender variance and undertake transition while still young.
The 2021 Census in the UK is going to include questions on gender identity to give more of an idea of the incidence of different genders.
Indeed true. But if you have a rigid definition of sex that centers on presence of a penis, then the existence of intersex people can disprove that your definition has merit.
There's a problem with making an argument from the uncommon versus the common. Intersex is commonly quoted as 1.7%, which draws from a particular finding. It may be as low as 0.018%. Definitional problems. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12476264
No, there's a problem making definitions that don't cover all the facts on the ground. Time to change your definition.
There's a problem with making an argument from the uncommon versus the common. Intersex is commonly quoted as 1.7%, which draws from a particular finding. It may be as low as 0.018%. Definitional problems. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12476264
No, there's a problem making definitions that don't cover all the facts on the ground. Time to change your definition.
No. Take the time to read okay?
Anne Fausto-Sterling s suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia.
Curiosity killed: The 2021 Census in the UK is going to include questions on gender identity to give more of an idea of the incidence of different genders.
I wonder how the question will be dealt with. It probably means that a single individual will fill in the answers for other members of the household as well as for himself/herself. ISTM the quality of any data on this subject collected in this manner will be highly suspect and impossible to interpret. How many respondents, for example, understand the notion of "different genders"?
It would be if I were defending entirely arbitrary or idiosyncratic usage, but I'd not. I'm defending a reasonable range of meaning.
"Man", for example, can have the meaning you give. "Approximately 50% of the human race are men" is an uncontroversial statement because the meaning of man as a human with a penis rather than a vagina is an ordinary one that all of us will instinctively understand as the one in use there.
But it would also be uncontroversial to say "A male human who is six years old is not yet a man", because the listener will instinctive get that the contrast there is not "men and women" but "men and boys", and exclude male infants from "men" despite having previously implicitly included them as "men" when a slightly different definition was implied.
And there are, of course, archaic uses where all humans, even women, are "men", special uses, such as "officers and men" where a "man" is an enlisted soldier, not a civilian or commissioned officer, and rhetorical uses like "real man" where a man is someone who typifies virtues that the speaker wishes to portray as masculine. Some of those uses can be objected to, but all will be generally understood.
I'm saying that even if you start with the man=human-with-penis definition, it's natural to recognise that if a hypothetically-castrated Eliab says "I'm a man", a subtly different definition of "man" meaning "human-who-had-a-penis-and-did-not-relinquish-it-voluntarily" is being implied, and is a useful and meaningful one in that context. And if you'll grant that that can be inferred from context, it seems to me to be a very small step to recognising that a transman making the same claim is implying a definition of "man" that might (in his particular case) be "human-who-has-or-would-like-to-have-a-penis", or "human-who-would-feel-more-themselves-if-they-had-a-penis" or "human-who-would-like-to-be-addressed-and-treated-like-humans-with-penises-are-treated".
How can we possibly have a discussion if we don't even have a shared understanding of what words mean?
There are works of speculative fiction in which a character's mind, or soul, or consciousness is moved to another body, and sometimes that body is of a different sex to the one that they started in. Suppose we are discussing one of those - Heinlein's "I Will Fear No Evil" is the one that first comes to my mind - and I opine that in my view, despite spending almost all of the novel in a female body, and at times enthusiastically exploring female sexuality, the protagonist is most definitely a "man". You might disagree, but you won't stare at me in blank incomprehension. You'll understand what I am claiming, and you'll understand the claim to be one about the character's outlook and identity, and further, and importantly, you'll understand it as a claim which might require interpretation and judgment, but could in principle be either true or false.
You wouldn't need to abandon "human-with-penis" as your default definition for "man" to have that discussion. You could, pretty effortlessly, switch to an identity based definition, because it would be blindingly obvious that the one thing I'm not claiming is that Joan Eunice Smith had a penis. Clearly she (or he) didn't. That's not even up for discussion. You'd know that I must be talking about something else, and I don't think I'd need to explain what that was. I think that you'd get it instantly.
I therefore don't ought to be difficult to recognise that when a trans person says that they are a man, that can be a claim about outlook and identity, not genitalia, and that it is, in the context in which it is said, always meaningful and almost certainly true.
There's a problem with making an argument from the uncommon versus the common. Intersex is commonly quoted as 1.7%, which draws from a particular finding. It may be as low as 0.018%. Definitional problems. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12476264
No, there's a problem making definitions that don't cover all the facts on the ground. Time to change your definition.
No. Take the time to read okay?
Anne Fausto-Sterling s suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia.
I read that. Your definition is still inadequate. Okay?
There's a problem with making an argument from the uncommon versus the common. Intersex is commonly quoted as 1.7%, which draws from a particular finding. It may be as low as 0.018%. Definitional problems. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12476264
No, there's a problem making definitions that don't cover all the facts on the ground. Time to change your definition.
No. Take the time to read okay?
Anne Fausto-Sterling s suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia.
I read that. Your definition is still inadequate. Okay?
It's not my definition. It's what most clinicians include according to the reference. Or is your opinion based on something? If so, please share.
My opinion is that "man=penis" doesn't fit the facts on the ground. One of which is the existence of intersex people, whom you treat as if they don't even exist. Such nichtung is unworthy of you.
It so happens that in real life I have heard a lot more intersex people talk about intersex than I've heard trans people talk about gender dysphoria. As I understand it the argumentation and demands of many intersex people are very different to those of trans people and there is a lot of resentment at lumping the two together.
Not least because the demand of many intersex people is to be recognised in a distinct category, (not M, F, but I) that is based precisely on the distinctive biological sexual characteristics they were born with, first and foremost their primary sexual characteristics (and in some cases exceptional chromosome makeup).
I'm quite open to correction, but it seems to me that this is absolutely not the same thing as gender dysphoria, if not the complete opposite.
as intersex describes deviations in innate sex characteristics and transgender is described as the mismatch between sex assigned at birth (SAAB) and gender identity. However some of those whose SAAB was assigned by medical staff as they were born with ambiguous genitals may be identifying as transgender, so it's not a clear cut issue.
The figure of 1.7% is still maintained by Intersex Human Rights Australia "despite its flaws". "This estimate relates to any "individual who deviates from the Platonic ideal of physical dimorphism at the chromosomal, genital, gonadal, or hormonal levels" and thus it encapsulates the entire population of people who are stigmatized – or risk stigmatization – due to innate sex characteristics."
Individuals with diagnoses of disorders of sex development (DSD) may or may not experience stigma and discrimination due to their sex characteristics, including sex "normalizing" interventions. Human rights institutions have called for the de-medicalization of intersex traits, as far as possible.
Which brings us right back to the question of which attributes of gender (as defined by yourselves) are specifically and unchangingly male or female.
Are we talking about stuff as irrelevant (to me, in this context) as "I want to wear pretty dresses" or "I want to be paid the same as the men in my office"? I can think of a whole bunch of similar things that are due to the fucked up way society treats men and women differently, but ISTM that the solution to that issue is to get society to stop treating men and women differently rather than to simply let individuals swap between one and the other according to how they'd rather be treated.
If gender roles in society should be the same for both sexes (which I strongly believe they should), and if biological considerations are irrelevant (as you claim), then what's left to define gender? Which remaining factors are there to make a difference?
As I just said, the problem there is that society treats the two sexes/genders differently. Are you suggesting that in a world where people treat everyone the same regardless of whether they're men or women there would be fewer transgender people?
I guess a lot of what I'm asking boils down to: if there's no objective, external definition of what it is to be a man or a woman, then how can anyone know which one they want to be?
More than two in five trans young people (45 per cent) have attempted to take their own life. For lesbian, gay and bi young people who aren’t trans, one in five (22 per cent) have attempted to take their own life, (p7)
<snip> 22% is the figure I found, and evidenced, for attempted suicide in LGBQ youth, and the attempted suicide rate for transgender youth is double that at 45% (link - Stonewall School Report 2017). The figure I can find for attempted suicide for teenagers, generally, from the CDC Healthy Youth report (pdf, p47) is that the rate of attempted suicide of young people in 2017 was 7.4%*. So LGBQ youth attempt suicide at three times the norm and trans youth attempt suicide at six times the norm. <snip>
* over the 10 year survey the rate of attempted suicide for teenagers varied between 6.8% and 8.6%, but comparing 2017 figures as that was the figures compared earlier.
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Could you explain how finding the researched figures for attempted suicide rates in young people is weaponising suicide?
Sorry, been busy for a few days, and things have moved on somewhat, so apologies to go back a bit.
Stonewall haven't released the full data and methodology for their study. And there are doubts about their figures (note, this is a pdf). It is also as ideology free a source as I can find. It conflicts with Tavistock information which reports suicide attempts at about 13%. And this quote too:
It should be noted that the Samaritans express concern on the portrayal and reporting of suicide and the sensationalising of statistics as this can have a detrimental effect on the wellbeing of young people and their parents.
@Marvin the Martian -- How does your rigid (no pun intended) definition scheme work for people who are intersex -- say, somebody who has both a vagina AND a penis?
That does not happen. The only thing remotely relating to this is of someone who has an enlarged clitoris and a vagina. But an enlarged clitoris is not a penis. I know you are responding to Marvin's "penis=man" post, but it really isn't great to talk about DSDs in such a way.
Perhaps we as a society and as families and individuals need to stop defining people by their physical characteristics except where such characteristics lead to a diagnosis of a medical condition that directly affects a person's health.
That would be great. But it relies on people who abuse, and society that disadvantages, on the basis of physical characteristics stopping doing so. As I've pointed out already, CCP has got a whole lot of stick for her book about how the world is designed for men. It would be brilliant if it didn't, but biology does matter.
I guess a lot of what I'm asking boils down to: if there's no objective, external definition of what it is to be a man or a woman, then how can anyone know which one they want to be?
A fascinating question, which goes to the heart of gender identity, gender expression, gender performance, well, all the gender stuff. How do children acquire these abilities? How much is culturally (socially), acquired, and how much is innate (biological)?
I would say that the jury is out, or tl:dr, we don't know. There is stuff like wearing a dress, which seems entirely cultural, and there are things like puberty, which are biological.
The idea of wanting to be one thing or t'other is also complex, since gender identity seems largely unchosen.
Conclusion:
A review of peer-reviewed journals suggests:
There is an overall lack of evidence/research.
A broad consensus that transgender people are at greater risk of non-suicidal selfinjury and suicidality (suicidal thoughts and attempts) compared to the nontransgender population.
National data doesn’t always easily segment by gender identity or sexuality.
It is widely accepted this is an under-researched area, and what does exist is typically based on small sample sizes.
Despite the disagreement about specific suicide rates there is evidence to suggest
that children, young people and their families do experience challenges and distress during what is a very difficult time for them and it is accepted that transgender people do experience an elevated risk of suicide.
So although there are queries about the Stonewall figures, backed up by similar other North American research, but not others. The small sample sizes mean that figures are not accurate, but that there is evidence that transgender people do experience an elevated risk of suicide.
Curiosity killed: The small sample sizes mean that figures are not accurate, but that there is evidence that transgender people do experience an elevated risk of suicide.
You express yourself with admirable caution, but we would be surprised, wouldn't we, to find that trans, given their situation not to be more exposed to emotional stresses leading to suicide than the population as a whole?
Sorry @Kwesi, that post is the end point of a conversation, starting a few days ago. quantpole had made a comment about the "weaponising of suicide. I queried that and reposted the figures for 2017 I'd found some pages back which suggested LGB young people attempt suicide at 2 x the normal rate and transgender young people attempt suicide at 6 x that of normal. quantpole's response was to query the research I'd quoted. I accepted those figures aren't accurate as the sample sizes are small, but had found that the research still concluded that transgender youth do experience an elevated risk of suicide.
I wasn't discussing reasons for the elevated risk. Another part of that discussion was that Tavistock figures are much lower, which in the paper linked above, was rationalised by saying that their patients are being treated so less stressed.
It so happens that in real life I have heard a lot more intersex people talk about intersex than I've heard trans people talk about gender dysphoria. As I understand it the argumentation and demands of many intersex people are very different to those of trans people and there is a lot of resentment at lumping the two together.
Not least because the demand of many intersex people is to be recognised in a distinct category, (not M, F, but I) that is based precisely on the distinctive biological sexual characteristics they were born with, first and foremost their primary sexual characteristics (and in some cases exceptional chromosome makeup).
I'm quite open to correction, but it seems to me that this is absolutely not the same thing as gender dysphoria, if not the complete opposite.
Very good. Now go back and notice that I was not equating them or even throwing them into the same bucket. I was saying that the existence of intersex people gives lie to the penis=man equation, and the whole facile point of view that parsing sex and gender is as easy as that.
I think the discussion regarding genitalia and the determination of sex might help from making a distinction between 'sufficient' and 'necessary' conditions.
gender identity is the key term here. It causes a lot of confusion and disagreement, because it's subjective.
Yes it's at the heart of the disagreement here, and yes subjectivity has much to do with it.
My ancestors and yours apparently managed to get along without the term "gender identity". But it may conceivably be of some use in the present discussion .
Question is - what do you mean by it ?
Are you referring thereby to feelings (which people do not choose to experience) ? Or to choices ?
If person A experiences a feeling of being a woman trapped in a man's body, does that mean that person A's gender identity is female ? Or does that feeling have to be particularly strong or persistent for that to be the case ? Is their gender identity altered if they decide (perhaps after some form of counselling) to continue to self-present as male in the day job ? (And perhaps maintain an online alter ego or role-play character who is female ?
Conversely, if person B has a male body but makes a conscious decision to declare to the world that they are female despite not having any strong persistent feeling to that effect, what is their gender identity ? (Does their motivation matter ? Perhaps as a cry for help ? Perhaps as an attempt to escape from the bullying at a boys' school by trying to get to attend the girls' school instead ?)
In short, is this term well-defined enough to be of any use ?
It's an internal experience...
...Those who are hostile to the idea of gender identity say that it's just about feelings (bad)
So is it all about feelings or not ?
Feelings aren't bad. They're just not the same thing as facts. "Fact" to me implies some sort of public truth.
Feelings are mutable. Elizabeth Bennett accepts Mr Darcy's second proposal because her feelings about him have utterly changed.
Feeling that something is true does not mean that it is true. Hypochondria is a persistent erroneous feeling that one is physically ill.
For avoidance of doubt, I'm not for a moment saying that gender dysphoria isn't a real condition. But one can believe that it is a real condition and wish the best outcome for those who have that condition (whether that is help in accommodation to the body they have or help to transform that body into one they can be happier in, recognising that either approach might be best in each individual case). Without any of the dubious philosophy which denies objective reality.
And some people want to define others, what a surprise.
People are individuals. You can't define them. You can only classify or categorise them. Which we all do. Your "gender identity" categories, your L, G, B, T (and whatever letter you've added this year), are just as much a way of classifying people as grouping them into anatomically male and female.
The conservative blogger Matt Walsh (not the Daily Show correspondent), has a youtube video called "Man, I feel like a woman", which puts forward various right-wing Christian arguments against trans.
One of them is quite familiar, how does a trans woman know what a woman feels like? However, I think this argument backfires. For example, I know what I feel like, well spasmodically, but how do I know that I feel like a man? I can observe other men, and make some inferences about how they feel. But then again, they all seem very different, some of them are noisy, but a lot of them aren't. Is there an essence of manhood? I don't think so.
Well, Walsh has outlined some of the odd things about gender identity, and that weird idea, which has troubled people for a long time, I don't know what you feel. To be absolutely candid, quite often, I don't know what I feel.
I guess a lot of what I'm asking boils down to: if there's no objective, external definition of what it is to be a man or a woman, then how can anyone know which one they want to be?
Err. People don't make decisions like that. People have their own experience and a perception of other people's experiences and end up feeling that they would like one thing or another.
You seems to want people to make a decision based on facts and analysis when in reality I suspect a person's choice is driven by their emotional needs.
As I noted earlier, I may know how I "feel," but that rarely references either my gender or sex. (Note that would not have been the case before menopause, since I then lived with periodic reminders of my assigned sex / gender).
CK pointed out that this remark sprang from cisgender privilege: fair point.
My admittedly limited experience with transgender folk seems to have involved a fair amount of anxiety on the part of the trans person about behaviors, grooming, and the like of the sex / gender s/he was transitioning into. IOW, about fitting in and "being" that gender / sex, and being so perceived by others.
All of which suggests that Marvin the Martian also has a fair point: if as a society we didn't put so much emphasis on male / female differences (alleged, anyway) in behavior, dress, grooming, occupations, etc. and stopped insisting on unequal treatment, it's possible that some (by no means all) gender dysphoria might be alleviated.
One elephant remains in the living room, however: pregnancy and childbirth. I would submit that, until / unless humanity switches over to lab-ifying the entire reproductive process (we'll likely have gone extinct before that transpires), equalizing the treatment of people who gestate and birth babies and people who don't is going to remain a significant challenge.
The conservative blogger Matt Walsh (not the Daily Show correspondent), has a youtube video called "Man, I feel like a woman", which puts forward various right-wing Christian arguments against trans.
One of them is quite familiar, how does a trans woman know what a woman feels like?
There are a number of trans youtubers who covered with this kind of argument from their perspective (she tends to be a bit blue, but Natalie Wynn/Contrapoints has done a couple of videos on this recently).
"Man", for example, can have the meaning you give. "Approximately 50% of the human race are men" is an uncontroversial statement because the meaning of man as a human with a penis rather than a vagina is an ordinary one that all of us will instinctively understand as the one in use there...
...There are works of speculative fiction in which a character's mind, or soul, or consciousness is moved to another body, and sometimes that body is of a different sex to the one that they started in. Suppose we are discussing one of those - Heinlein's "I Will Fear No Evil" is the one that first comes to my mind - and I opine that in my view, despite spending almost all of the novel in a female body, and at times enthusiastically exploring female sexuality, the protagonist is most definitely a "man". You might disagree, but you won't stare at me in blank incomprehension. You'll understand what I am claiming, and you'll understand the claim to be one about the character's outlook and identity, and further, and importantly, you'll understand it as a claim which might require interpretation and judgment, but could in principle be either true or false.
You wouldn't need to abandon "human-with-penis" as your default definition for "man" to have that discussion. You could, pretty effortlessly, switch to an identity based definition, because it would be blindingly obvious that the one thing I'm not claiming is that Joan Eunice Smith had a penis. Clearly she (or he) didn't. That's not even up for discussion. You'd know that I must be talking about something else, and I don't think I'd need to explain what that was. I think that you'd get it instantly.
Long time since I read that book. My recollection is that Joan Eunice Smith was a male brain in a female body in the most literal sense. Who used the name Eunice as a tribute to the woman who had suffered brain-death in a way that left a body that was then available for Mr Smith's brain...
And Joan then threw herself enthusiastically into the business of living as a female. Dressing as a female, dancing as a female etc. Did she enrol at an all-female college ? I don't remember the details.
So yes, there is a sense of the word "man" in which it is true to say that this fictional character is a man, and that sense is not hard to understand.
But that sense does not require that she take her very-female body into male-only changing rooms, for example.
If we agree that "man" and "woman" can be understood in more than one sense, the question then arises as to which of those senses is applicable when we talk of "women's sport" or "single-sex college" or any other of the (actually rather few) circumstances in which our society segregates men and women.
If you have a Men's Shed - a place where men can talk together about things that men are interested in whilst enjoying the companionship of working together on a shared project, then male thought patterns may be a more relevant qualification for admittance than male genitalia.
But women's sport is, I suggest, essentially sport for female bodies, and to admit a male body to compete (e.g. on the basis of female thought patterns in the brain that animates that body) defeats the object of having separate events for women.
Is it not an obvious philosophical error to reason that being a man in one sense entitles a person to be treated as a man in another sense ?
I'm pondering this from an interesting angle just now. Four hours ago, the North East Man was putting his trousers on after a swim when his back went into spasm. Since then he has been lying on his back, wearing only his underpants, in the male changing room. I got here two hours ago and am stuck in the gym cafe, because as a woman I'm not allowed into the male changing room, because of the sensitivities of any naked men who might be there.
We're waiting for a doctor, but as he's conscious, breathing etc he is a low priority.
Given that there is clearly a medical situation going on, are men really so shy that they couldn't cope with a woman popping in? If I were a transman how awkward would it be to use the male changing room?
Incredibly difficult unless the transman was convincingly male. And very dangerous for any transwoman. That's why unisex changing rooms would solve this.
A big photo in the Guardian of "lesbians for trans rights" on London Pride today, and the undiplomatic language, "last year lesbian terfs tried to hijack Pride to push their transphobic agenda".
A big photo in the Guardian of "lesbians for trans rights" on London Pride today, and the undiplomatic language, "last year lesbian terfs tried to hijack Pride to push their transphobic agenda".
Comments
How about other people? Do you ask to examine their genitals, when you meet them? Going to a party with you must be wild.
The primary fear that I've heard expressed by cis men is that they might start dating an attractive woman only to end up finding that she's "actually" a man. You know, the whole Crying Game thing.
What intrigues me is that genitalia appear important to the transgendered in that many are prepared to undergo intensive surgery to acquire representations of the equipment.
Yes, and as I said before I respect that. What I don't understand is this idea that one can become the opposite gender to that one was born with without changing one's genitalia. Which is why I'd be so interested to find out which aspects of manhood/womanhood are being considered more important.
For them it's important, but so what? For some people tattoos, or particular hairstyle, or tracing their ancestry to the 14th century is important. I don't understand why anyone would want an opinion on or expect a defence from people who want something different to you.
Because one's biological sex and culturally defined subjectively experienced gender are two different things.
That's sex, rather than gender.
I think that gender identity tends to get erased, if we focus on genitals, chromosomes, and so on. Well, some feminists argue for this, and then transgender disappears, or trans women are "really men".
Transgendered people have a mismatch between their gender identity and their sex assigned at birth (SAAB), for whatever reason.
@Kwesi - I'm a cisgendered female.
Well observed.
I'll take your word for it!
The incidence of transgender (pdf) as assessed in 2011 was being quoted as: and and I suspect part of the moral outrage we are currently seeing is linked to this finding:
The 2021 Census in the UK is going to include questions on gender identity to give more of an idea of the incidence of different genders.
Indeed true. But if you have a rigid definition of sex that centers on presence of a penis, then the existence of intersex people can disprove that your definition has merit.
No, there's a problem making definitions that don't cover all the facts on the ground. Time to change your definition.
No. Take the time to read okay?
I wonder how the question will be dealt with. It probably means that a single individual will fill in the answers for other members of the household as well as for himself/herself. ISTM the quality of any data on this subject collected in this manner will be highly suspect and impossible to interpret. How many respondents, for example, understand the notion of "different genders"?
It would be if I were defending entirely arbitrary or idiosyncratic usage, but I'd not. I'm defending a reasonable range of meaning.
"Man", for example, can have the meaning you give. "Approximately 50% of the human race are men" is an uncontroversial statement because the meaning of man as a human with a penis rather than a vagina is an ordinary one that all of us will instinctively understand as the one in use there.
But it would also be uncontroversial to say "A male human who is six years old is not yet a man", because the listener will instinctive get that the contrast there is not "men and women" but "men and boys", and exclude male infants from "men" despite having previously implicitly included them as "men" when a slightly different definition was implied.
And there are, of course, archaic uses where all humans, even women, are "men", special uses, such as "officers and men" where a "man" is an enlisted soldier, not a civilian or commissioned officer, and rhetorical uses like "real man" where a man is someone who typifies virtues that the speaker wishes to portray as masculine. Some of those uses can be objected to, but all will be generally understood.
I'm saying that even if you start with the man=human-with-penis definition, it's natural to recognise that if a hypothetically-castrated Eliab says "I'm a man", a subtly different definition of "man" meaning "human-who-had-a-penis-and-did-not-relinquish-it-voluntarily" is being implied, and is a useful and meaningful one in that context. And if you'll grant that that can be inferred from context, it seems to me to be a very small step to recognising that a transman making the same claim is implying a definition of "man" that might (in his particular case) be "human-who-has-or-would-like-to-have-a-penis", or "human-who-would-feel-more-themselves-if-they-had-a-penis" or "human-who-would-like-to-be-addressed-and-treated-like-humans-with-penises-are-treated".
There are works of speculative fiction in which a character's mind, or soul, or consciousness is moved to another body, and sometimes that body is of a different sex to the one that they started in. Suppose we are discussing one of those - Heinlein's "I Will Fear No Evil" is the one that first comes to my mind - and I opine that in my view, despite spending almost all of the novel in a female body, and at times enthusiastically exploring female sexuality, the protagonist is most definitely a "man". You might disagree, but you won't stare at me in blank incomprehension. You'll understand what I am claiming, and you'll understand the claim to be one about the character's outlook and identity, and further, and importantly, you'll understand it as a claim which might require interpretation and judgment, but could in principle be either true or false.
You wouldn't need to abandon "human-with-penis" as your default definition for "man" to have that discussion. You could, pretty effortlessly, switch to an identity based definition, because it would be blindingly obvious that the one thing I'm not claiming is that Joan Eunice Smith had a penis. Clearly she (or he) didn't. That's not even up for discussion. You'd know that I must be talking about something else, and I don't think I'd need to explain what that was. I think that you'd get it instantly.
I therefore don't ought to be difficult to recognise that when a trans person says that they are a man, that can be a claim about outlook and identity, not genitalia, and that it is, in the context in which it is said, always meaningful and almost certainly true.
I read that. Your definition is still inadequate. Okay?
Not least because the demand of many intersex people is to be recognised in a distinct category, (not M, F, but I) that is based precisely on the distinctive biological sexual characteristics they were born with, first and foremost their primary sexual characteristics (and in some cases exceptional chromosome makeup).
I'm quite open to correction, but it seems to me that this is absolutely not the same thing as gender dysphoria, if not the complete opposite.
as intersex describes deviations in innate sex characteristics and transgender is described as the mismatch between sex assigned at birth (SAAB) and gender identity. However some of those whose SAAB was assigned by medical staff as they were born with ambiguous genitals may be identifying as transgender, so it's not a clear cut issue.
The Wikipedia article discussion on population figures is clear that the 1.7% figure is flawed, a figure suggested from some research published in 2000, but that:
(I have removed the hot links to references.)
Which brings us right back to the question of which attributes of gender (as defined by yourselves) are specifically and unchangingly male or female.
Are we talking about stuff as irrelevant (to me, in this context) as "I want to wear pretty dresses" or "I want to be paid the same as the men in my office"? I can think of a whole bunch of similar things that are due to the fucked up way society treats men and women differently, but ISTM that the solution to that issue is to get society to stop treating men and women differently rather than to simply let individuals swap between one and the other according to how they'd rather be treated.
If gender roles in society should be the same for both sexes (which I strongly believe they should), and if biological considerations are irrelevant (as you claim), then what's left to define gender? Which remaining factors are there to make a difference?
As I just said, the problem there is that society treats the two sexes/genders differently. Are you suggesting that in a world where people treat everyone the same regardless of whether they're men or women there would be fewer transgender people?
Sorry, been busy for a few days, and things have moved on somewhat, so apologies to go back a bit.
Stonewall haven't released the full data and methodology for their study. And there are doubts about their figures (note, this is a pdf). It is also as ideology free a source as I can find. It conflicts with Tavistock information which reports suicide attempts at about 13%. And this quote too:
That does not happen. The only thing remotely relating to this is of someone who has an enlarged clitoris and a vagina. But an enlarged clitoris is not a penis. I know you are responding to Marvin's "penis=man" post, but it really isn't great to talk about DSDs in such a way.
That would be great. But it relies on people who abuse, and society that disadvantages, on the basis of physical characteristics stopping doing so. As I've pointed out already, CCP has got a whole lot of stick for her book about how the world is designed for men. It would be brilliant if it didn't, but biology does matter.
A fascinating question, which goes to the heart of gender identity, gender expression, gender performance, well, all the gender stuff. How do children acquire these abilities? How much is culturally (socially), acquired, and how much is innate (biological)?
I would say that the jury is out, or tl:dr, we don't know. There is stuff like wearing a dress, which seems entirely cultural, and there are things like puberty, which are biological.
The idea of wanting to be one thing or t'other is also complex, since gender identity seems largely unchosen.
So although there are queries about the Stonewall figures, backed up by similar other North American research, but not others. The small sample sizes mean that figures are not accurate, but that there is evidence that transgender people do experience an elevated risk of suicide.
You express yourself with admirable caution, but we would be surprised, wouldn't we, to find that trans, given their situation not to be more exposed to emotional stresses leading to suicide than the population as a whole?
I wasn't discussing reasons for the elevated risk. Another part of that discussion was that Tavistock figures are much lower, which in the paper linked above, was rationalised by saying that their patients are being treated so less stressed.
Very good. Now go back and notice that I was not equating them or even throwing them into the same bucket. I was saying that the existence of intersex people gives lie to the penis=man equation, and the whole facile point of view that parsing sex and gender is as easy as that.
My ancestors and yours apparently managed to get along without the term "gender identity". But it may conceivably be of some use in the present discussion .
Question is - what do you mean by it ?
Are you referring thereby to feelings (which people do not choose to experience) ? Or to choices ?
If person A experiences a feeling of being a woman trapped in a man's body, does that mean that person A's gender identity is female ? Or does that feeling have to be particularly strong or persistent for that to be the case ? Is their gender identity altered if they decide (perhaps after some form of counselling) to continue to self-present as male in the day job ? (And perhaps maintain an online alter ego or role-play character who is female ?
Conversely, if person B has a male body but makes a conscious decision to declare to the world that they are female despite not having any strong persistent feeling to that effect, what is their gender identity ? (Does their motivation matter ? Perhaps as a cry for help ? Perhaps as an attempt to escape from the bullying at a boys' school by trying to get to attend the girls' school instead ?)
In short, is this term well-defined enough to be of any use ?
So is it all about feelings or not ?
Feelings aren't bad. They're just not the same thing as facts. "Fact" to me implies some sort of public truth.
Feelings are mutable. Elizabeth Bennett accepts Mr Darcy's second proposal because her feelings about him have utterly changed.
Feeling that something is true does not mean that it is true. Hypochondria is a persistent erroneous feeling that one is physically ill.
For avoidance of doubt, I'm not for a moment saying that gender dysphoria isn't a real condition. But one can believe that it is a real condition and wish the best outcome for those who have that condition (whether that is help in accommodation to the body they have or help to transform that body into one they can be happier in, recognising that either approach might be best in each individual case). Without any of the dubious philosophy which denies objective reality.
People are individuals. You can't define them. You can only classify or categorise them. Which we all do. Your "gender identity" categories, your L, G, B, T (and whatever letter you've added this year), are just as much a way of classifying people as grouping them into anatomically male and female.
One of them is quite familiar, how does a trans woman know what a woman feels like? However, I think this argument backfires. For example, I know what I feel like, well spasmodically, but how do I know that I feel like a man? I can observe other men, and make some inferences about how they feel. But then again, they all seem very different, some of them are noisy, but a lot of them aren't. Is there an essence of manhood? I don't think so.
Well, Walsh has outlined some of the odd things about gender identity, and that weird idea, which has troubled people for a long time, I don't know what you feel. To be absolutely candid, quite often, I don't know what I feel.
Err. People don't make decisions like that. People have their own experience and a perception of other people's experiences and end up feeling that they would like one thing or another.
You seems to want people to make a decision based on facts and analysis when in reality I suspect a person's choice is driven by their emotional needs.
CK pointed out that this remark sprang from cisgender privilege: fair point.
My admittedly limited experience with transgender folk seems to have involved a fair amount of anxiety on the part of the trans person about behaviors, grooming, and the like of the sex / gender s/he was transitioning into. IOW, about fitting in and "being" that gender / sex, and being so perceived by others.
All of which suggests that Marvin the Martian also has a fair point: if as a society we didn't put so much emphasis on male / female differences (alleged, anyway) in behavior, dress, grooming, occupations, etc. and stopped insisting on unequal treatment, it's possible that some (by no means all) gender dysphoria might be alleviated.
One elephant remains in the living room, however: pregnancy and childbirth. I would submit that, until / unless humanity switches over to lab-ifying the entire reproductive process (we'll likely have gone extinct before that transpires), equalizing the treatment of people who gestate and birth babies and people who don't is going to remain a significant challenge.
There are a number of trans youtubers who covered with this kind of argument from their perspective (she tends to be a bit blue, but Natalie Wynn/Contrapoints has done a couple of videos on this recently).
Long time since I read that book. My recollection is that Joan Eunice Smith was a male brain in a female body in the most literal sense. Who used the name Eunice as a tribute to the woman who had suffered brain-death in a way that left a body that was then available for Mr Smith's brain...
And Joan then threw herself enthusiastically into the business of living as a female. Dressing as a female, dancing as a female etc. Did she enrol at an all-female college ? I don't remember the details.
So yes, there is a sense of the word "man" in which it is true to say that this fictional character is a man, and that sense is not hard to understand.
But that sense does not require that she take her very-female body into male-only changing rooms, for example.
If we agree that "man" and "woman" can be understood in more than one sense, the question then arises as to which of those senses is applicable when we talk of "women's sport" or "single-sex college" or any other of the (actually rather few) circumstances in which our society segregates men and women.
If you have a Men's Shed - a place where men can talk together about things that men are interested in whilst enjoying the companionship of working together on a shared project, then male thought patterns may be a more relevant qualification for admittance than male genitalia.
But women's sport is, I suggest, essentially sport for female bodies, and to admit a male body to compete (e.g. on the basis of female thought patterns in the brain that animates that body) defeats the object of having separate events for women.
Is it not an obvious philosophical error to reason that being a man in one sense entitles a person to be treated as a man in another sense ?
We're waiting for a doctor, but as he's conscious, breathing etc he is a low priority.
Given that there is clearly a medical situation going on, are men really so shy that they couldn't cope with a woman popping in? If I were a transman how awkward would it be to use the male changing room?