TRANS by Helen Joyce was a real page turner for me. It was life affirming to see all my concerns were valid and I’m not the only one who believes the reality of sex should have primacy over the fantasy of gender.
A transwoman tweeted this week that they had done 23 and me - a DNA test - and had been appalled to learn that they still had a Y chromosome. It was 'very distressing'. They had genuinely thought that they had become a literal female. Madness
That shows how utterly deluded and ignorant these people are! One cannot change biological sex. It's impossible. In 500 years, if this disturbed man's bones are ever found and analysed, every anthropologist and medical student will know that this was a man's skeleton. Full stop. Even without DNA analysis. The shape and size/length of the bones give it away. It's basic biology.
"A bunch of angry women is the last thing you want to see." And this makes them absolutely needed. Thank you for that anger, and for the clarity it forces into view.
It really is the one subject that you just are not allowed to talk about, even respectfully. It's strange how quickly it just got taken on uncritically by the media.
Please keep up the great work of being calm, rational voices in this increasingly irrational discussion! As a trans person of sorts, I have a question for women such as yourselves, but first here's a little background to give you a sense of the place I'm coming from: I am a biological female, who in my early 30's after a fair amount of research decided to give transitioning a try. I have always related better to men, am homosexual, but never at any point in my life was under the impression that I was in the "wrong body" or should/could be a man with modern interventional therapies. My goal in transitioning was not to become a man, but to see if testosterone therapy, and possible further steps, would improve my well being. After a year of hormone therapy successfully done, I had a double mastectomy because I, in fact, had always hated my breasts. 3 years on testosterone and 2 years post top surgery, I am happier than I have ever been and have no plans to pursue further surgeries. I never had any comorbid mental health issues, either. The word "transitioning" feels funny to me because I know cognitively that I have not really transitioned anything, and I let people use whatever pronouns they see fit for me. Yet, I do not feel like I fit into women's spaces (I pass mostly as male these days), physically or mentally, but neither do I technically fit into men's spaces. I know there are DSM definitions for conditions surrounding transgender, and then there seem to be people like me who qualify in a loose way. It's an interesting position, and I'm at peace with and even to some degree enjoy the solitary in-between, so here's my question: As women, *how do you see someone like me*? I intentionally keep that question broad so I don't pigeon-hole a certain response, and really would enjoy any answer for you that comes to mind, from these speakers or anyone reading this comment. Thank you!
I honestly still consider you a woman. I don't know your personal story but in my view, a gebder dysphoric, trans identifying or a transsexual female is still a woman. A woman is a female adult human and I would have no problem with a transitioned female in women's spaces. However, a third space for trans individuals might also be a good solution.
You’re a woman. A female who has modified her body. I’d see you as a person but whenever I see mastectomy scars It hurts me inside. Not sure why but it makes me flinch and want to weep. But I’d never tell you this because my reaction to you is about me, not you.
I suppose I see you as a woman with body dysmorphia, who feels better after having treated it with medication and surgery. If you are genuinely happy, then that's a good thing, although I wish their were less invasive ways for someone with negative feelings towards their own body parts to relieve those feelings with less health risks. I think we should do more research into less invasive methods to relieve dysmorphia (as well as to relieve gender dysphoria, which it appears you don't have according to your own description of how you feel)
So you were (actually still are) a lesbian and you’ve undergone conversion therapy and made yourself a pretend straight man. That this makes you feel better is pretty sad
Feminism - Human biology must be transcended in order for women to be free-indeed, that there needs to be a wholesale revolution against biology and human nature itself if women are ever to be free Sex and gender are a social construct - Judith Butler
The basis of her critique in tne book is Blanchard Bailey & Lawrence - so it just another pathologising discourse; psychologising, reductionist, very limited, thin in its research, it’s poor understanding of bodies (as anything but brute nature) and lack of related deep feminist scholarship, and of gender as social process. And it lacks any insight from psychoanalytic viewpoints; the latter are actually enabling and depathologising (Gherovici, Elliot, and a lot of what Lemma says - the latter is a massive scholar). Joyce’s terms of debate do little to foster any attempt to empathise, or any serious compassionate engagement - with a group she sees as mad, & perverse; so her terms are disingenuous, and her claims full of contradictions - she pretends to be open and sympathetic but is hostile, sly, provocative in language. A writer with such a bitter taste in her mouth that her slight, feigned generosity of spirit cannot sweeten. It’s a re run of Janice Raymond, generating moral panic, telling us we are sick. Old battles are refought here - gender is not the issue but perversion, contamination by ‘maleness’; compare with the stigmatising medical discourse of Blanchard and a zillion others - Stoller, Person, Lukianowitz, Bancroft - even nastier. A book without an index without bibliography is suspect. Our opponent prefers we did not exist, and yet tells us we are silencing debate, and maybe suggests some sort of reeducation regime. Am so sick of hearing how ‘disordered’ we are. The momentum is driven by fundamentalists one ideology or another; Here we go again.
You are the one with no empathy. Thinking it’s ok to put kids on medication that arrests their puberty and then putting them in cross sex hormones and then surgically removing their genitals is about as lacking in empathy as is possible. Pretending that people don’t want you to exist because it fits your narrative is another form of narcissist coercion. Of course you exist. You just haven’t changed sex.
