Is Jenni Murray right about transgender?

1. Sexuality is much more than body parts and sex (though it includes these things, too).

2. Sexuality includes our gender identity (the core sense that we are female or male).

3. Sexuality includes gender role (the idea of how we should behave because we are a female or male).

4. Sexuality includes our sexual orientation (heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual).

5. Sexuality includes how we feel about our bodies. We call that “body image,” and poor body image can have a profound effect on our ability to have healthy relationships. A person with poor body image may not think they deserve a good partner, and so they may be willing to settle for someone who will not respect them or who may even abuse them.

6. Sexuality includes our sexual experiences, thoughts, ideas, and fantasies.

7. Sexuality includes the way in which the media, family, friends, religion, age, life goals, and our self-esteem shape our sexual selves.

8. Sexuality includes how we experience intimacy, touch, love, compassion, joy, and sorrow.

9. We like this quote: “Sexuality is expressed in the way we speak, smile, stand, sit, dress, dance, laugh, and cry.”

I think Jenni Murray is right. So many people conflate sex and gender. Sex is a biological fact, (apart from the rare cases of intersex people) while gender is a social construct.

What exactly does it mean when someone says they 'feel like a woman'? Or feel like a man? What does Eddie Izzard mean when he talks of his boy brain and his girl brain?

I feel sorry for anyone not happy in themselves, of course, but I think a big problem with this issue is the erasure of biological women. I know a few women who have left the Green Party after it was proposed their members be regarded as men and non-men. There is also the attempt to erase the term pregnant women in favour of pregnant people.

I'm with JM on this. There is a very extreme group of transgender people who are pushing the whole debate and crying transphobia. At the extreme, they want it all to be based on self identification - there are issues about so-called transgender women with penises wanting to share women only spaces - e.g. Prisons, changing rooms etc. No thank you and neither do I want someone who has not had the experiences of growing up as a women speaking for me

I used the word 'sexuality' as this is an issue much wider than gender bags

Ankers.
Science can perform many tasks /transplants where the human body is concerned that can make a man physically look like a woman.
It has YET to achieve that which makes a male think as a woman.
How many men have been heard to say 'Women? I will never understand them'

It will be a very sad day if JM is sacked for an opinion - the thin end of a very thick wedge .There are already instances of people being disciplined or made to apologise for ridiculously trivial matters and surely this will lead to suppressing free speech?

Part of our gender is learned behaviour from the moment of birth. Girl babies are treated differently to boy babies from the word go. This different treatment is usually quite unconscious regardless of how you think they are being brought up.It would be quite difficult for a transgender person as they have lost years of learned behaviour. Still if that is what they want so be it. But it s not an easy road to tread.

Murray is correct to say that transgender people have not had the benefit if this learned behaviour, so I suppose you could argue that there are big gaps in their experience of being a girl baby/girl and woman, which "makes" them a woman.

But whether it's a kind or necessary thing to say is a different issue.

Lynneig
I agree.
Unless you were born with physical abnormalities that only further medical tests will reveal,ie a male /a female then how you dress has to be nothing more than a preference.
Quote: I never felt or thought as a man.
This does not automatically make you a woman. How do you think like a man or a woman unless you are biologically a man or woman.??
Preference for who you chose for intimacy does not
say who you are when it comes to gender.

Really don't think a transgender woman could ever produce sperm!
I used to treat a man who eventually became a woman, he was having electrolysis (now it would be IPL).
He couldn't understand why his wife would let him dress up at home but wouldn't go out with him in his female attire. He also wouldn't wait until his 12 year old daughter was older before he made the transition. Maybe this is the mindset JM was talking about.

Of course she is right- if you lived your childhood as a boy then you have not had the experience of being a girl- no matter how much you felt you were in the wrong body. You have been treated by society as a boy & that is still very different from the way we treat girls.
I get a bit fed up of all this stuff. I was listening to the radio a few weeks ago to a programme about a woman who had had a sex change & was banging on about his human rights & now wants it reversed so he can have a baby & then go back to being a man again! All on NHS I hasten to add.
It is not an illness but a life style choice. I have sympathy but I think it has become a 'fashionable' thing to do these days. We all knew kids at school who were either tomboy girls or wimpy boys & they all grew up OK. Nowadays they would be offered counselling!

anya, is gender the same as sexuality?

Not sure of someone has said this already, but one of JM's points was, I believe, that in her opinion men who change into women are, along with all the other psychological stuff, changing into women as men see them, which could be another reason why JM doesn't regard them as "real" women.

I understand that because when I was in my teens and wearing some of my older brother's clothes for going on a bike ride, my father commented that my outfit was "not very feminine". I said: "I don't have to try to be feminine; I'm feminine by definition." It still holds: it doesn't matter what I look like. I think some people will disagree with that and argue that feminine is not the same as female and they do have a point. However, I'd have to try really hard not to look female whatever my outer garb.

It's complicated.

pennturner, is what you write medical fact, medical opinion, or your own opinion?

I'm not sure about this one but I can understand that someone who has trasitioned from one sex to another or was born "intersex", might feel hurt by this remark.

Although I'm not particularly keen on Jenni Murray (she always seems rather smug to me), I do have some sympathy with her view on this. And I think the absolute uproar that occurred when Cermaine Greer made a similar remark was over the top. Provided people aren't being disrespectful and sarcastic or stirring up resentment or hatred, I tend to think that they should be able to express an opinion without being demonised.

Whilst I agree with the point that someone made that identifying as a female is more than just a physiological thing, I do think that the physiological element is important. Also, the day-to-day experience of being a woman - at home, in the workplace and in every other area of public and social life - is very different for women.

Intrigued by the transgendered person who wanted eggs frozen to be own sperm donor. 1) how is this possible? 2) is this not potentially dangerous genetically?

I get Jenni's point which is not biological but social. I have 3 women friends who are priests/ministers of religion. All 3 have had to,and still do, fight against gender prejudice all their working lives. It hasn't been easy for them to challenge the status quo but all three are very strong women because of this. The vicar in question hasn't had to do this, although must be experiencing her own problems now.

When it comes down to it, our gender is part of the way we think about ourselves. If transgender people have always thought about themselves as a different gender from what they were originally designation, I can quite appreciate their wanting to transition. Harms no one else. I know a young person currently transitioning into a man, involving not just taking hormones, but having a double mastectomy and full hysterectomy! ? Not easy.

It seems to me that there are more of these people about now - but maybe it is just that the surgery and medication is more widely available.
Do you think that this has anything to do with the extra female hormones in the water supplies - I have read that these have been found in the water and they are due to the amount of HRT type drugs prescribed to women.
There has always been a wide spectrum of masculinity or femininity in people but it was simply accepted. For all that these people feel they need to change their gender completely it is very few of them who seem to get the whole change correct - I agree what you say about the clothes and hair but it is also how they walk - particularly when wearing high heels.

Good post Katek
And yes, JM has a right to her opinion of course, as we all do.Being a broadcaster and a journalist does make her pronouncements more 'weighty' with the general public, but we can all feel free to agree or disagree with her.

Throughout time people have been dissatisfied with the sex they had at birth, castrated males have been called eunuchs for a long time so why call them women? Every cellin their body carries male dna whatever the appearance. XX chromosomes or XY determines sex not outward appearance so really no one can "change their sex" male or female. If people choose to live as a different sex let them, but they have not changed their sex.

A woman is a woman if she feels she is a woman - what would Jenni Murray know about how it feels to be transgender! I consider her comments to be unkind, thoughtless and disrespectful - but not a sacking offence.

Absolutely!

I think it comes down to someone (like JM) passing judgment on another's sexuality. It's up to the person who owns that body and not for others to opine on. Yes, they can have an opinion, in the same way as some have an opinion on the way Theresa May dresses (just as an example) but when it comes down to it, it's none of their bloody business

in my humble opinion

We have a transgender male to female woman living in our community. She is in her early 40's and was father to 4 children before transitioning with all the surgery that entails. Unfortunately she now wears the most inappropriate clothing-not for her new sex - but for her age. It's as if she's somewhere between her teens and Bet Lynch. She's also become a complete diva. None of this is helping her to become accepted and is doing the transgender community no favours. I've had many a conversation with a gay friend about transgender issues and he says it's about how people perceive themselves, not their biological definition. I agree with those who have said trans women can never have a complete female perspective or understanding as they've been brought up as male. No periods, childbirth, sexual innuendo, job discrimination (I know there shouldn't be but there still is)etc. These women are artificially created with hormones, drugs and surgery. That's fine if that's what makes them feel at peace in their skin, I have no problem with that, but they can never have a complete female perspective as they have been raised as male. Their perspective is what they think women are like. At the end of the day if you analysed the DNA it would still be male.

There's also been an online petition from the transgender community to prevent GG speaking at a women's event in Brighton because of her views. Sorry, freedom of speech, choice and action works across the board. You might not like what she says but she has the right to say it

Fascinating subject - I've just listened to a discussion on Women's Hour about the book "Men are from Mars women are from Venus" and if we have moved forward in the last few decades. It would have been very interesting to have had transgender people as part of the discussion.

Jenny Murray has extreme political opinions and is a real snowflake about some issues. However, I don't see why she shouldn't have an opinion on this and any other subject she feels informed enough about to hold. It's called free speech and we can join the debate and counter or examine her arguments which will take the subject forward and inform the issue.

I am sick of safe-spacing and no-platforming by an ill informed, inexperienced and politically correct generation which takes its opinions ready packeged from one side of the political spectrum only.

I don't actually think anything is off limits for discussion and I am also wearied by nincompoops who say, 'You CAN'T think that!'

I agree Jaycee5.
I think even Jenni Murray will have changed her own ideas pretty soonish.
And may even be championing the opposite of what she is saying now!

You are physically a woman, so are the transgender women. You are emotionally (psychologically?) a woman based on your experiences since childhood, no, babyhood as sexism starts there. It must be difficult for transgender women to replicate that. You may know a gay man you relate to who understands the negativity women endure (in workplace, on the bus etc) because they too have experienced similar bullying. Men who long to be women may have endured bullying too; most minorities have. Bruce Jenner was a big, muscley sporty white guy, so I doubt he got bullied, but he lived in a very female household. I have no idea how he related to the experiences of growing up a girl.