Gender? Sex? Help me out please.

That's interesting volver, I too would really like to understand. I appreciate that some subjects are all consuming for people; but I don't see why a lot of young women are prepared to throw the elderly, unwell, disabled, school children, disadvantaged overseas etc., to the wolves by voting Tory just because the Tories are saying that they know what a woman is. Are they saying that the rights of trans people over ride those of others who will likely suffer if we have by a thousand cuts again by returning another Tory government?

I think it is because, as with religion, people can become very angry and/or upset when their belief system is questioned.

If you read the 'Vagina Museum' thread and others on GN about this issue you'll know "why people are so angry about this" volver.

It was the "How do you decide who to vote for" thread and the one about Lib Dems that made me think of asking this question GillT57 as it does really seem to be such a big deal for people and I would like to understand why.

It's a co-incidence that you have started this thread, because I was toying with the idea as I am disturbed by something I read on MN. Basically, it was a 'how will you vote next time?' thread, and almost without fail, every post on the first two pages ( I admit to giving up after that), was 'I cannot vote for Labour until they recognise I am a woman, and that women's right should not be sacrificed for trans rights'. I must have been living under a rock because although I am aware of TGA, I am saddened that it may become more important (or vociferous?) than social care, housing policy, NHS, education, roads, foreign policy.........Surely this should just be one aspect of a party's manifesto? Like you volver, I tend to stay away from threads discussing TGA as they seem to heat up quickly, and anyone asking an innocent question can get accused of all sorts of transphobism in the blink of an eye, so could be keep it calm?

Well as a scientist I certainly knew about the difference between sex and gender, but I appreciate people taking time to explain it.

But "science" doesn't explain why people are so angry about some of this and what a big deal it is for them. So I was thinking this thread was going somewhere, especially with what VioletSky was writing. I hope we get more thoughtful posts like that, and less of the rudeness. Yes, I'm looking at you Riverwalk

Let's see.

I'm thinking on starting a thread on Dawkins

Oh, give over with the faux ignorance... you're a scientist.

Most people are assigned a sex at birth and that's absolutely fine and on they go with their lives.

For a proportion of the population that is much greater than people generally think, the gender they feel on the inside does not match the outside. For years people have tried to fix this with conversion therapy but it has not worked. Their gender dysphoria has remained.

Most transgender people choose to transition to one extent or another during their lifetimes. This can range from dress and appearance to taking the appropriate hormones that help restructure their sex to surgery to change their physical appearance.

A lot of people think human beings cannot change sex but actually that is not fully true. While we cannot currently give a transgender woman the ability to grow a uterus or a transgender man the ability to create sperm, we can give them hormones that make physical changes to their bodies. So it is currently partly true that sex can be changed and with advances in science it will likely go further.

Some hold fear of trans women in particular, that this is men forcing women aside and out of place. That something is being taken away from them, that being born male and being given ability to enter spaces that have previously been designated for those assigned female at birth means that women are now not safe.

Some believe that it is only men masquerading as women who are dangerous. This would mean that even if trans women were kept out of these spaces, the danger would remain.

There are a list of a spaces that most seem to agree it is not black and white, like sports, or prisons. With sports there may be unfair advantages to transitioning and in prisons this would risk putting a known sex offender of women in with women. Most of us agree this is problematic but some of us feel that the solution is to have a seperate wing for trans sex offenders and a trans woman who stole something as one example is likely not a risk yet, its often agreed that for now, that risk is not worth taking.

Some people do not accept trans women as women. That by accepting trans women as women we are making ourselves less than. That allowing transition is too damaging for those who later find out that that's the wrong path for them. That trans women are a threat in women's spaces.

Some people do accept trans women as women, think that the vast majority of trans women are just ordinary people living their lives and using changing rooms and bathrooms without anyone being the wiser. That it's not the fault of all trans people that a small minority are let down by the medical community and have to detransition. That trans women are not a danger, males masquerading or fetishising women are. That trans women make us more, not less.

Trans men are rarely mentioned

Erm... That's all I have for now lol

Sex is determined by gametes and is what differentiates males from females. It is the same regardless of time, culture, social class or age.

Gender is a social construct, and can vary. It is a series of norms that are attributed to people, usually (if not always) on the basis of sex. So the idea of women being nurturing and men being providers is a gender norm. Gender norms vary across time (eg the parts of the body that can be displayed by men and women), culture (ditto, but also things like who can drive, sexual freedoms etc), culture (marriage or childbirth customs amongst many others) social class (appropriate jobs/careers) and age (hobbies, interests etc). Fashion plays a part, too (eg tattoos used to be almost exclusively male in western culture, but they are no longer gendered. Clearly these things are not set in stone, and many people cross gender norms all the time, particularly where clothing and things like drinking alcohol and fashion are concerned.

The conflict occurs when people say that they can change sex. This is a biological impossibility, so there are those who try to make gender and sex interchangeable. It is possible for people to adopt characteristics of the other gender, and most of us do so routinely, and change back and forth without insisting that we are sometimes male and sometimes female and mostly we don't see ourselves as either.

Whether people call themselves male, female or gender-neutral is unimportant, except when it allows male-bodied people to enter spaces that have been designated single-sex for reasons of safety or dignity (eg prison cells, changing rooms or rape suites). There are also issues around sport, research statistics and other areas, but they are the main bones of contention, as well as the way in which the insistence that people can change sex is mangling the language, removing words such as 'women' or 'mothers', which is, arguably, eradicating women and subsuming them into a 'not male' subgroup, and many feminists object to this.

The 1980s were probably the nearest we ever got to that MOnica
P.s. Thanks for the comment.

Two biological sexes. Gender is an entirely social construct. I look forward to the day when anyone can be and do and dress anyway they choose without anyone thinking it other than perfectly normal regardless of their biological sex.

Gender is the social constructs we live our lives under and by. Some people believe gender shouldn't be dictated by your physical body but is something you feel and that sometimes your physical body doesn't match the gender you feel you are. Sex is the physical construction, the biology of our bodies.
There used to be two genders, man and woman but now there are non-binary people and gender fluid people. People who feel their physical body doesn't match the gender they feel they are want to change, the act of change is called transition. Transwomen are male bodied people who want to be women. Transmen are female bodied people who want to be men. Non binary people will not join either gender.
I'm sure you knew loads of this!

Beautifully put, Ilovecheese

Some people think that human beings can change from one sex into the other sex.
Other people don't believe that.
No one will change the others mind any more than Richard Dawkins has ever persuaded anybody not to believe in God.