Gender? Sex? Help me out please.

I am glad that women's aid are considering the feelings of traumatised children. Really, their feelings should come first.

Doodledog

Hi GagaJo. We cross posted.

You may have missed my earlier post, asking if you would please let us know your definition of a 'woman' and a 'man', so that we can understand what it is that you think people 'just know' that they are? It would definitely help understanding between the two 'sides' of the argument if we each knew those basics from the other.

Ah DD, I'm not getting sucked into 'trick questions'.

All that would happen would be a fusillade of aggressive comments. Which would be rich, given that I'm a mini Putin.

How is 'what is a woman?' a trick question?

Really - how? And I have compared nobody to Putin.

Q: What is a woman?
A: Nope! I'm not answering trick questions!

You'd make a grand politician Gagajo!

Chewbacca

Q: What is a woman?
A: Nope! I'm not answering trick questions!

You'd make a grand politician Gagajo!

Because clearly we have differing opinions.

No, DD. MOnica thinks intersectional feminists are mini Putins'. See my quote of her statement above.

Because clearly we have differing opinions.

I am far from clear what you mean by 'woman' though. I know that you think that anyone who says they are a woman is a woman, but that only makes sense if we both know what you think a woman is (whether or not we agree is immaterial).

People on this thread are, on the whole, supportive of one of two broadly similar views, but we do not speak as members of teams. I am not saying that anyone is like Putin.

Brilliant news about Women's Aid, thanks Chewbacca. Their statement is so reasoned and sensible.

Gagajo you are only allowed to answer "adult human female" but the truth is, there isn't one answer. It's different for everyone.

We are being reduced to sex categories, ignoring our vast and varied biology. The very biology that for years has allowed women to be stereotyped, seen as weaker, seen as so different to other women they were enslaved and sold.

Biology as diverse as a woman's has caused many non white women pain and fear yet biology is now somehow fixed?

Sojourner Truth "Ain't I a woman?"

Some people see women as a biological fact, men and women. Nothing else.

Some of us see it as a rainbow. A beautiful spectrum of difference and diversity.

I wasn't born a woman, I was born a baby, I became a child, on an equal footing with boys, running, jumping and getting dirty in the mud. What was there to tell us apart except for the hair and clothes chosen for us by adults?

I wasn't born a woman, society told me I was one when I reached physical maturity. Society told me what to wear, how to act.

Am I a woman? I choose my clothes my hair, my personality, I choose to express myself in the ways women do that I enjoy.

Can anyone look at me and declare my womanhood undoubtedly? Probably but only because that is what I choose and how I express myself.

You see, everything about who I am as a woman is inside me. Its in my thoughts, my opinions, my appreciation of beautiful things, the ways I would like to look, the clothes I would like to wear, in the things I appreciate about friends, family, the strength I have for my children, the love and the pure determination to be a good mother.

I am a woman on the inside, not the outside. I can change the outside, I can get fatter or thinner, I can wear more or less makeup, I can cut my hair or grow it out. I can have my body surgically altered but who I am on the inside is the same.

It's the same for trans women.

I am me, a woman and so is she.

VioletSky

Gagajo you are only allowed to answer "adult human female" but the truth is, there isn't one answer. It's different for everyone.

We are being reduced to sex categories, ignoring our vast and varied biology. The very biology that for years has allowed women to be stereotyped, seen as weaker, seen as so different to other women they were enslaved and sold.

Biology as diverse as a woman's has caused many non white women pain and fear yet biology is now somehow fixed?

Sojourner Truth "Ain't I a woman?"

Some people see women as a biological fact, men and women. Nothing else.

Some of us see it as a rainbow. A beautiful spectrum of difference and diversity.

I wasn't born a woman, I was born a baby, I became a child, on an equal footing with boys, running, jumping and getting dirty in the mud. What was there to tell us apart except for the hair and clothes chosen for us by adults?

I wasn't born a woman, society told me I was one when I reached physical maturity. Society told me what to wear, how to act.

Am I a woman? I choose my clothes my hair, my personality, I choose to express myself in the ways women do that I enjoy.

Can anyone look at me and declare my womanhood undoubtedly? Probably but only because that is what I choose and how I express myself.

You see, everything about who I am as a woman is inside me. Its in my thoughts, my opinions, my appreciation of beautiful things, the ways I would like to look, the clothes I would like to wear, in the things I appreciate about friends, family, the strength I have for my children, the love and the pure determination to be a good mother.

I am a woman on the inside, not the outside. I can change the outside, I can get fatter or thinner, I can wear more or less makeup, I can cut my hair or grow it out. I can have my body surgically altered but who I am on the inside is the same.

It's the same for trans women.

I am me, a woman and so is she.

What a lovely post VioletSky Thank you.

Difficult to reply to you Gagajo since I have not the remotest idea what an 'intersectional feminist' is. I wrote of doctors and psychologists who are so bound up in their views that they are incapable of seeing more than one view and reject any view that doesn't accord with their opinion - and then quoted the case of the Reimer twins.

This type of doctor exists in every field, but they are particularly attracted to psychiatry and psychology and I have had bitter experience of them in areas totally unrelated to the subject under discussion on this thread. It is a view of life DH defines as I've made up my mind do not confuse me with facts.

Violetsky essentially what I understand you to be saying, but in beautiful poetic langage, is that gender is a social construct and biology isn't. - and I am in total agreement.

What a lovely post VioletSky Thank you.
It's very poetic, but you could replace 'woman' with pretty much anything, and it would make as much sense, wouldn't it?

It doesn't get anyone very far with a definition of what being a woman means.

Thank you trisher all I can do is avoid those people who dishonestly don't allow me to be my authentic self.

I hope that for trans people in the future and I feel in time that will happen

My DD decided to be a boy when she was primary school age and even wanted to call herself Ben. We used to go along with it at home, but always with a smile and a wink - she would laugh too. She is a happily married mother to two children now.

She also spent about 6 months pretending to be a dog.

Luckygirl3
My DD decided to be a boy when she was primary school age and even wanted to call herself Ben. We used to go along with it at home, but always with a smile and a wink - she would laugh too. She is a happily married mother to two children now.

I’m glad you let her try that out without needing to offer her, or even, as some parents are doing, compel her, to take more drastic and possibly irrevocable steps as is happening now.

One of my sisters, between 8 and 11, wanted to be a boy, and shortened her name so that it sounded like a boy’s name. There wasn’t the option to wear trousers for school, but she wore shorts all through the summer. She flatly refused however to have her long plaits cut off until she went to high school.

I wonder what your DD thought the benefits of being a dog might be.

I do wish people would stop belittling transpeople by posting personal experiences of themselves or children who supposedly wanted to be a different gender when they were younger. You wouldn't do it to any other group of people. Could you imagine for example someone posting 'Oh my child was very sad when they were younger" if the subject was teenage suicide? It fails to recognise the real trauma that trans children and their parents experience.

Good job your sister wasn't saying that today MollyGo; she'd have been whisked off to a gender dysphoria clinic, given puberty blockers and found herself being counselled for being trans gender.

Chewbacca

Good job your sister wasn't saying that today MollyGo; she'd have been whisked off to a gender dysphoria clinic, given puberty blockers and found herself being counselled for being trans gender.

Of course she would Chewbacca because everyone knows that the parents of transchildren are thoughtless,uncaring and prepared to hand their children over to anyone.

Yes it’s quite frightening when you think of it.
Thankfully her name shortened easily. I wouldn’t have been so lucky as no one had heard of Mo (Farah) back then.

Another sweeping generalisation trisher? How rude of you to cast aspersions on my sisters feelings. How did you decide my sister only ‘supposedly’ wanted to change gender?

That’s nice trisher.

According to trisher @ 23:02, everyone knows that the parents of transchildren are thoughtless,uncaring and prepared to hand their children over to anyone.

I’m glad it’s only trisher who thinks so. Most parents take it more seriously than that and many of them accept the irrevocable damage that may be done, so support their children without rushing them into chemical or physical changes.

Sorry. 22:02.

The thing is, trisher, that we just don't know whether the children of previous generations would be offered hormones nowadays, or whether modern children who are offered them would have grown out of a 'phase' if they'd been left to get on with it. Every case only goes one way, doesn't it?

Doodledog

The thing is, trisher, that we just don't know whether the children of previous generations would be offered hormones nowadays, or whether modern children who are offered them would have grown out of a 'phase' if they'd been left to get on with it. Every case only goes one way, doesn't it?

Sorry - posted too soon. What I mean is that it's not about belittling or taking too seriously - it's more that the first response now seems to be to go straight to 'transition' (in whatever form that takes), and then that option wasn't available, so the children had to grow out with it or deal with it some other way.

None of it is ideal, and the question, to me, is why it can't be ok for people to be who they want to be, without it being tied to an 'identity'.

That is why I keep asking about what is meant by 'woman' in this context. Why does a confused boy feel that he 'is' a woman? What is it that he wants to be, or feels that he is? The same applies to girls and men, obviously. I just don't understand, and whereas it is blindingly obvious that 19th century poetry doesn't give me the answer, I never get far when I ask the very people who push for others to make those changes.

Doodledog

The thing is, trisher, that we just don't know whether the children of previous generations would be offered hormones nowadays, or whether modern children who are offered them would have grown out of a 'phase' if they'd been left to get on with it. Every case only goes one way, doesn't it?

How on earth can you know that Doodledog? You have no idea how many children have questioned their gender and passed safely though a period of uncertainty with or without the help of counselling. Nor how many children have satisfactorily changed their gender.

One of the reasons we cant know some of those answers is because they havent been collecting the data properly.

FFS, I am acknowledging that we just don't know, but you are still picking at everything I say!