Self ID of gender...can we discuss this?

Not scientifically accurate, Gossamer. There are far more options than that which occur in nature.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/

There is something at the heart of transgenderism that I struggle with.

The feminist battle has been that the traditional view of what women are is entirely cultural, that at heart there is no mental difference between being a men or a women, other than cultural constructs.

The transgender view seems to be that minds are gendered and that they have the the mind of one gender and the body of another and want to go with the mind

If one group say that gendered minds do not exist, they are merely accultured and others say gendered minds do exist.... I am confused.

I have no personal problem about people being anything they say they are. I just take people as they come.

Things would be so much simpler if gender just dictated what role you played in producing babies instead of dictating every aspect of your life. Your job, your pay, your social life, your hobbies, the clothes you wear even the way you cut your hair. All these things really have nothing to do with gender yet if you do not fit in with the stereotype for your gender then you become one of the minority groups and often discriminated against.

Isn't the whole debate about gender just kind of under discussion / consideration in general MOnica? Society and culture are in flux, and this happens to be one of the areas undergoing change.

Some people who are one gender want to be the other, some people fit somewhere in the middle, some are in flux throughout their lives, some discover that part of themselves later in life, some are happy with the gender they were assigned at birth.

I think it's a bit like how there used to be multiple names for mixed race people, depending on their level of their mix. And how we used to just see people as gay or straight, and now there are lots of subcategories and mixes.

I agree with you that it is all superficial. I don't judge by the colour of someones skin, who they have sex with, or what is in their pants. It's the quality of their character that is important.

Gaga jo I agree the majority of young women are far less concerned about the erosion of the protection they receive because of their sex or if the rights enshrined in law to protect them.

However i feel incredibly strongly that they are swept up in a wave of woke live and let live because they don’t understand the implications of trans women’s rights eroding their own.

Issues such as transwomen in women’s sports, self ID being used in respect of scholarships, tracking women in higher level management, crimes involving women, skew the data and leaves men a massive loophole to encroach on our rights.

Fallon Fox - horrific human being, her victims either faced stepping down and being labeled transphobic or well, see what happened to them.

I do wonder why those who say they are worried about transpeople always post about individuals who behave in unacceptable ways? There must be loads of men we could post about who have been involved in such activities but I am sure we don't think all men are like that, so why must transpeople be identified with the worst?

Incidently I don't think it is anything to do with young women being "woke" they simply live in a world where their friends are members of the LGBTQ community and they know it doesn't matter.

Trisher it isn’t that these examples of trans people reflect all trans- I don’t believe for a second that they do. More that those examples are allowed to do what they do and any opposition is labels transphobic. They are beyond reproach, it is accepted. It takes us back 100 years.

For the record I respect transwomen in general, they, like all women, need and deserve protections in law. I will use whatever pronouns are preferred. I just don’t agree with the way radical TRAs are allowed to treat women in the name of trans rights.

Babyshark, I will ignore the patronising tone you are using. Yes, young people don't have OUR lived life experience. But as a long term, older feminist, who has worked both in a support organisation and as a teacher in schools where teenagers are presenting more and more as trans, I DO have a fair bit of hands on experience. And I share the opinions of the younger generation.

I appreciate the opposite point of view, but I disagree with it. They are similar to the arguments that were put forward about women in the earlier waves of feminism, about gay people in gay liberation and about people of colour, in the civil rights movement. I do get that they come from a place of fear, but we have weathered other social changes and we will weather this one too.

To be fair, I understand that gender is the MOST rigidly policed social construct. More than age, race, sexuality or physicality. So yes, I know this debate will rage for a long time. Way past my lifetime. But the change is happening and we aren't going back to binary gender.

Exactly MOnice, one of the transwomen I know has done a lot for the lesbian community. It was 15 years ago that I knew her, before we had entered the current 'trans hate' phase that feminism has entered. Nice woman.

Sorry Gaga Jo There was no patronising tone meant. I genuinely think that younger generations do not understand because they have not experienced discrimination based on their sex.

Where there are young people that have, there is an overwhelming pressure to accept self ID, trans rights above their rights by their peers.

My opinion is borne from my experiences with young people. Sorry if I offended you. It wasn’t purposeful.

Ooops, sorry. Me too. I got a bit heated. Also not intentional.

My stance is (not that anime asked I know but I don’t want to be labelled transphobic as I don’t believe I am).

Call yourself what you like, dress as you like, use what pronouns you like, live your life as you see fit. Have protections in law, demand your rights to be treated with respect.

But please respect women’s only spaces, sports die to a biological advantage and in instances such as scholarships that are in place due to over representation of men, take one of those places as opposed to one allocated to a girl. You have the advantage on those instances, don’t encroach on the less advantaged sex.

No worries Gaga jo, it’s an emotive subject.

Gagaj Your reply doesn't really answer the question I asked which, essentially, does gender actually exist? Feminists would say it didn't. If it doesn't exist, how can you change something that doesn't exist.

I guess because the system we live in works in binary opposites. Most of us pick one or another. To 'fit in', people put themselves into one or the other category. If you are 3 years old and like the loud, boisterous children in the sandpit, and they call themselves boys, maybe you decide you must be a boy too. I've certainly seen my very lively, noisy grandson do that. He is growing up with 2 women looking after him and has a lot of 'girly' toys. But he likes the boisterous kids and isn't as interested in playing quietly and nicely. Hence gender stereotypes are born, I guess.

There are people who are non binary. We could posit that gradually there will become more non binary gendered people, but that is just theorising. None of us older feminists could have predicted this was the direction the gender war would go in.

M0nica

Gagaj Your reply doesn't really answer the question I asked which, essentially, does gender actually exist? Feminists would say it didn't. If it doesn't exist, how can you change something that doesn't exist.

I'm a feminist M0nica and I am absolutely certain that gender exists. It is the social constuct imposed by society to define what is male or female. I might wish it didn't exist and we lived in a gender neutral society but we don't.
I would hold the requirements of gender responsible for many of the impositions and restrictions placed on everyone in society, which prevent many people from reaching their true potential.

Babyshark I genuinely think that younger generations do not understand because they have not experienced discrimination based on their sex
I have never experienced slavery but I know very well that it is wrong and horrific.

NellG

Cass64 I agree, I was simply responding to vampirequeens request to have the 2nd wave explained - as this article explained the timeline and philosophies it seems better than me making a ham fist of it. Doesn't mean I agree with it, neither does it mean I care how other people feel about it. It's just information.

Sorry , I wasnt having a go at you, I just meant that this whole first second or third wave business is more labels..

Men are have been and will be men... We get labeled even the tag Miss or Mrs is a clear label ..Why start giving ourselves yet more labels? Thats all I meant.

To an extent NellG, I agree. I didn't really notice a change between 3rd and 4th wave. I DID notice the fall-off in feminism at the end of the 2nd wave. There was active hostility towards feminism and feminists. The whole thing with women saying, 'I'm not a feminist but...' and then explaining beliefs that were clearly feminist.

Trisher Yes but, I am in total agreement that gender is a social construct, which needs to be phased out, but if we accept that how can anybody be born with a male mind in a female body or vice versa, if it is a social construct you are not gping to have it hard wired in. That is what I do not understand.

No worries Cass64 I just didn't want you to think I was adding to the problem. Absolutely no offence taken.

Gagajo Your comment there hooks into the debate I wish we'd had on the original feminism thread. There were elements of the 2nd wave that were so aggressive and so 'male' that they not only confused but alienated a lot of women, who rightly still wanted to feel like, present as and be feminine, 'traditional' women - they wanted respects and rights too, they just didn't want to have to grow their leg hair and stink of patchouli to do it ( massively simplistic representation I know, but I think the essence is relevant).

Bearing in mind feminism in the history of the world and the formation of what has always been a patriarchal society is pretty much still foetal - in that we've only just begun and a lot of the 4th wave ideas are disparate . As such, is it any surprise that the 3rd wave got a bit confused?

Biological sex is a fact.
Gender is a social construct.
Using the two terms interchangeably confuses the issue.

Interesting topic I'm still trying to understand. Haven't been on GN long so only seen the subject come up once in a thread not dedicated to this subject.
Through my work I've come across several people who fit (for various reasons) this group. The one thing they have in common is that they are all sensitive people. I appreciate this may not be the full picture.
The one that worried me was the young person who had hormone therapy for over a year when they were with a partner but stopped & completely reverted when the relationship ended.
People are people.

FarNorth or does it advice debate?

It's perfectly possible to accept that biological sex for the purposes of procreation is a fact, yet still be able to discuss gender identity with respect that trans people are real, effective human beings with rights too.

Some seem to cleave to that single biological distinction as an excuse to further marginalise an already vulnerable group of human beings in the belief that they can simply 'work on their feelings' I'm sorry, but having literally picked up some of the bodies from that misapprehension I can't rest on it as a satisfactory argument.