VS I don't know how you can claim that you weren't being offensive. You have been told time and again that many people on this thread find 'cis' offensive. It was your choice to continue to use it, and it is gaslighting to say that it is my fault that I am offended.
In fact the whole response is straight out of the abuser's handbook. It is my fault that I am offended, I am not being 'grown up' because I have said so, and if I speak out you will walk away. Are you disappointed rather than angry, too?
ICHTB the term 'cis' in its current form was coined by the trans lobby.
Rosie, yes, that too. Call black people 'cisblack', appropriate the bits of their culture that appeal and change the language to include the small number of white people who 'identify' as black. I can't see that going down well, can you?
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Read it in The Irish Times
(132 Posts)Trans rights a question of reasonableness and common sense
There is no absolute human right to erase gendered thought and language on a widespread basis
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I sense that there is a real danger for transgender people that ideological activism by a tiny minority may lose them the goodwill and empathy of the great majority.
Michael McDowell
I have nothing but complete empathy for any person who finds themselves having to confront a deep-seated conviction that their ostensible physical sex does not correspond with their gender. That self-understanding or conviction is not a matter of sexual orientation – conveniently divided by some into heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual. Orientation or attraction varies among people with gender dysphoria as much as it does with all other people.
Moreover, I also accept that many trans people endure a great deal of profoundly painful rejection and/or suspicion from those who neither understand nor empathise in any way with their situation. They naturally see such rejection as a form of discrimination and, moreover, an unjust discrimination that infringes their human rights.
And that is where things become complex. Current thinking favours elimination of all forms of discrimination on the ground that it necessarily involves inequality.
But that raises the question as to whether society or the Irish Constitution is bound by anti-discriminatory principles to regard everyone for all purposes simply as a human citizen with an innate human right to self-identify as male, female, fluid, transgender, or, indeed, non-gendered.
I incline to the view that for the vast majority of citizens, distinction based on ostensible physical sex is very important in many but not all aspects of our social existence. Sex cannot simply be wished away as a concept or as a social reality. The growth of women’s equality as a strong anti-discriminatory movement in the last hundred years demonstrates that distinction between ostensible physical sex is hugely important. While legal and economic inequality for women is being tackled with varying degrees of success, the demands from within the trans community for the large-scale dismantling of distinction based on ostensible physical sex is not necessarily a common cause with feminism.
Take, for instance, sport. In some, but not all, areas of competitive sport, women wish to compete separately from men. This is not a relic of outdated ideology but is based on an obvious truth – that men are physically more likely to win than women in sports like running, rugby, all kinds of football, swimming, wrestling, boxing and many others.
To require people with objectively male physiques to compete against other such people and people with objectively female physiques to compete with other such people is only fair if that is the way that the great majority of competitors want. Achieving such objective athletic fairness and justice, I think, trumps any sense of injustice that a person born with a male body and identifying as a woman may feel if excluded from competing in an all-women’s event.
Does that mean that we prohibit gender self-identification for all purposes? I don’t think so. If a person I previously assumed was male tells me that he wants to be dealt with as she or her, perhaps good manners and empathy requires me to do that. Those who wish to signal their preferred mode of address should be free to do so.
But it does not, in my opinion, mean that we all must adopt gender-neutral language such as “chest-feeding”, “men with wombs”, “people who menstruate” and the like, in order to spare the feelings of some of those with gender dysphoria.
In the end it is a question of reasonableness and common sense. I think that the great majority of people would happily legislate to ensure that identity documents can easily be changed to accommodate the genuine wishes of people with dysphoria. By the same token, many people may not want to end gender-based changing rooms and bathroom facilities in all cases or to legally require further such facilities for transgender people.
For the great, great majority, gender-based language, thought, concepts and social convention are really part of what we are – just as central to our personalities as the identity-convictions of trans people are to them. It isn’t a question of thoughtlessness.
That trans people experience rejection as a consequence of our civilisation’s social recognition and distinctions of sex and gender does not confer on them an absolute human right to erase gendered thought and language on a widespread basis.
While anyone can cite statistics, studies tend to suggest that adult dysphoria is very rare, and much rarer in people born women than men.
I sense that there is a real danger for transgender people that ideological activism by a tiny minority may lose them the goodwill and empathy of the great majority. That would be a pity.
Michael McDowell is a barrister and a former minister for justice
Just wondering who started using the word "cis" to mean "this side." Was it women?
You know I mean cis as intended and how it has been used for a while to mean this side where as trans means that side.
I don't use it offensively so that's your choice doodledog
If we can't be grown ups and not take offense where none is intended then I'll just go and your discussion will just be one sided and less relevant to diverse opinion
Doodledog your question about the concept of transblack people reminded me of a tweet I read.
^The fact you're using the term "cis woman" to please men is the proof this ideology is damaging to women.
It would be like you calling me "cis black" because Rachel Dolezal says she black.^
Like the tweeter I don't see the difference between identifying into another sex and identifying into another race or culture. The original members get to keep their term, no need for qualifiers which make them a subset of their own class.
I wouldn't use the term, necessary or not, but I still have to hear people refer to me as 'cis', as you have just proved. You do it when you know I find it offensive, and others do it because they think it is 'kind' or 'woke', or because Stonewall tells them to. Whatever, I dislike it intensely, so the fact that I won't ever use it myself is no comfort really.
Similarly, future generations of women will, if this is not halted, grow up with people calling them 'cervix havers' and 'people who give birth', as though they are characters from The Handmaid's Tale. I don't know the figures for transmen who give birth, but I'd be surprised if there are enough of them to warrant a change in the language for everyone else.
What is your take on the concept of transblack people?
doodledog
I know this probably isn't an acceptable answer
But it's an idea that most trans people would want anything
And it likely isn't true that chestfeeding would be wanted to apply to everyone
It's just that sometimes, in the interest of showing acceptance and understanding, some organisations, committees make mistakes.
I don't think it would ever be necessary for you or any cis woman to use that term
I hope that's enough
I can understand why a couple would want a biological child. I can believe that some transmen might want to have a baby - I know you don't believe it, but I do live and let live.
What I object to is not people doing what works for them, but to their wanting to change things for the vast majority because of what works best for them. Have a baby by all means. Feed it yourself if that works for you. But don't tell me that I am a 'person who gave birth' and that I 'chestfed' my babies.
What do you see as the difference between that and a white person saying they identify as black and expecting black people to change their culture, or the way they talk to one another to fit in with the white person's adopted persona? Would you accept that Transblack people ARE Black? Would you be happy for transblack people to take spaces on Equal Opps race quotas, even though as white people they have suffered no race discrimination? Genuine question - I can't see the difference, except that I assume that most people would see the idea of transblack people as offensive, however good they were at blacking up and 'passing'.
Because I have heard gay men say they wish they could...
Because if they use a surrogate, only one gets to be a biological parent.
Because if a trans man is in a relationship with a man, they could both be biological parents this way.
Which leads to the fact that surrogacy is out of reach financially for some.
But I understand if you can't consider another's point of view or wish if it might provide understanding towards a trans person
Oh and VS, to “dearly love’ for something doesn’t make a point valid. One of my 6 year olds ‘would dearly love’ to fly but he is never going to be a bird.
I don’t understand your points. There is nothing to stop either members of a lesbian couple carrying a child. They are both women.
Gay men cannot carry a child because they’re male though that doesn’t stop them using adoption or surrogacy to bring a child into their partnership.
Transmen are female, therefore they can carry a child and breastfeed it -but only because they are female and as I said, if a female suffers from gender dysphoria and wants to be a man, and wants to be accepted as a man, doing something which identifies them as undeniably female, doesn’t make sense.
Mollygo
I would say chestfeeding for for a transman if a transman asked me to, although why someone desperate to be a man, or who ‘feels’ they are a man, would decide to acknowledge really being female to the extent of having a baby does not make sense.
But transmen are women, and women who plan to feed naturally, do so via breasts, so deserve to have the word breastfeeding on any description of their role or actions, not have another word foisted on them unless they so choose.
An answer that would interest me...
Are there gay couples who would dearly love for one of them to actually carry a child?
Are there straight cis males who would also welcome that?
Would some fathers breast/chestfeed or carry their wanted child if doing so were possible?
If so then a trans man choosing to biologically carry and feed their own child does make sense
In the past, transwomen had to try to 'be women' because of discriminatory attitudes in society.
Now, tho, they should be able to own the reality of being male people who do not fit the boring old stereotypes.
Instead, they have taken it further by insisting that they are really women which is completely ridiculous.
I know not all transwomen do insist that but enough of them, along with Stonewall, have been doing so that society has been trying to contort itself to please them.
Yes, it is the men wanting to be "women" who should get the new name for their new status, not the women who have always been women and have not changed.
For me it's because qualifying 'woman' in that way diminishes something that is as important to me as it is to transwomen, yet their wishes are put above those of actual women. It means buying into an ideology that I don't share - that of 'gender' being any more than a set of socially-determined behaviours that are stereotypically linked to sex.
I feel less strongly about 'chest-feeding', so long as it is only used to describe transmen feeding babies (a situation which must, as Molly says, be a rare one), and not incorporated into mainstream terminology and applied to the vast majority of mothers who are female.
Feeling that is no more transphobic than it would be racist to object to a white person 'identifying' as black and then expecting to shift the language and culture to incorporate their different socialisation and heritage.
Incidentally, I think I have a clue to why women get so annoyed at being labelled "cis".
It isn't just the trans/cis division. Cissy is a term of abuse applied to ultra dainty girly children (male or female, though most often used against boys) who cry a lot, won't take any risks and want to be protected from everything. It is used by the winners in playground wars, and strongly implies loser
Suits of armour include a breastplate, and there is a hand tool called a breast drill. (See one at www.zoro.co.uk/shop/hand-tools/hand-drills-and-braces/breast-drill-13mm-3-jaw-chuck/p/ZT1009186X if you've never heard of it - the carpenter leans his - er - breast on the shaped bit at the end to help push the bit into the wood while he turns the handle)
Not exactly gendered specially for cissy women.
Men get breast cancer in their breast tissue, and for those, breast is the usual word in men as well as in women.
Actually, the official recommendation for calling it "chestfeeding" or whatever wasn't aimed at using it for all breastfeeders, but for those who didn't want to have such a "feminine" word as breast used for them
I would say chestfeeding for for a transman if a transman asked me to, although why someone desperate to be a man, or who ‘feels’ they are a man, would decide to acknowledge really being female to the extent of having a baby does not make sense.
But transmen are women, and women who plan to feed naturally, do so via breasts, so deserve to have the word breastfeeding on any description of their role or actions, not have another word foisted on them unless they so choose.
Seems sensible on the whole
I don't think the whole people who menstruate and chestfeeding thing was ever really going to take off though.
It remins me of when we were told it had to be happy holidays not merry Christmas... when actually we can just use what we like and a company or organisation trying something different doesn't dictate what words we use.
So I will say breastfeeding and a trans man may chestfeed...if that helps them with their dysphoria...
It's a strange old world
I'm glad for all the different people in it.
This isn’t the perfect thread to post this on, but there are so many similar threads, I chose this one as it’s active.
The actual report is a long read, but worth it imo.
sex-matters.org/posts/updates/why-do-single-sex-services-matter/
I found it confusing that he says 'ostensible physical sex' and uses 'gender' when it seems 'sex' is what he means.
Surely, however distressed someone is and whatever steps they take, they should accept their actual physical sex and should not seek to falsify documents.
To be clear - I am NOT saying that everyone should stick to outdated stereotypes for females and males.
Indeed Witzend.
Then organisations and lawmakers believed that Stonewall were the best ones to advise them on this new area of 'human rights' which they didn't understand.
But Stonewall's training presented the law as they'd wish it to be, not as it actually is.
Thank you for sharing this? Absolutely this! It sums up all my thoughts, and puts them clearly. I work with “the woke” and I’ve copied this and I have it to show them my position as it expresses it so much more clearly than I could. Thank you.
Yes, Stonewall charge each of their "Diversity Champions" two and a half thousand a year, plus more for the privilege of having Stonewall train them and their employees in how to carry out Stonewall's lobbying and social engineering projects for them.
As there are 850 Champions (or there were that number a couple of years ago, before some reneged on their membership) they receive at least £2 million a year from Government departments, educational establishments, household-name business organisations and so on.
What a good article. It puts what it seems that a lot of us think in a very reasoned and unemotional way. Thanks, Mollygo.
Excellent article.
I’ve read very recently* that funnily enough, a lot of it is down to money. Since working for gay rights is no longer such a big thing, Stonewall needed a new cause with a capital C, and I gather that they charge businesses/corporations hefty sums in order to be certified Stonewall-diversity-approved.
So the money is rolling in nicely, since so many big names are terrified of being deemed non-woke-enough.
Hence all the pronoun business, among other things.
*and no, it wasn’t in the Mail any other red top, in case anybody’s wondering.
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