Skip to content

Trans women are not women

Finally, we have agreement. Carrie Marshall (I wanted to say Carrie Fisher there but she’s got an entirely different set of problems, like being dead) now agrees that trans women aren’t women.

Or rather, that blanket statement, “trans women are women” is not true. The correct answer is “It depends“.

The same thing happens with trans women: I get invitations for cervical cancer screening but I won’t for prostate cancer screening; I don’t have a cervix but I do have a prostate.

Anti-trans activists are blaming us for this, claiming that if we didn’t change our gender markers that wouldn’t be a problem. As ever, this is coming from a place of profound ignorance about trans people’s bodies and healthcare. If we don’t change our NHS gender markers then that throws the system into disarray too: our blood tests are returned as abnormal (this happened to me several times) and we are not invited to screenings for things that do affect us, such as breast cancer screening for trans women.

Excellent. We do now have at least logical agreement. We are as with that PJ O’Rourke point about gender differences. Sometimes they don’t matter and possibly shouldn’t even be acknowledged – when trading bonds – and sometimes they’re vital differentiations – like when making babies.

So too with trans. The wearing of frocks? Seriously, get with it. Pronouns? Sigh. Prostate screening? Ah, yes, the difference does matter.

Cool, now we get to go on and discuss which differences matter and when? Because we’re all now agreed that sometimes the differences do matter and are indeed a vital matter of differentiation.

The listing of mother or father on the birth certificate? The tracking of mitochondrial DNA might be important, might not be. Add other issues as you wish. Sticking an anatomically male rapist into a women’s prison? Perhaps that might be the same side, other side, depends on who is doing the differentiating.

But we do now have agreement. Trans women are not women in every and all senses of the word. Sometimes the differences are indeed important. Now all we’ve got to do is work out which times? For the answer “never” is wrong, isn’t it?

22 thoughts on “Trans women are not women”

  1. The NHS doesn’t care what your gender is, or anything else in your mind, all it cares medically is what your sex is.

  2. Tsk, Tim

    You’re forgetting the mantra of these people

    What do we want?

    – EQUALITY!

    When do we want it?

    – When it suits us

  3. You could always refer to people who are women by sex as being woman/S and women who are women by gender only as being woman/G.

    It gives you more letters to add to BLTNBGPDQ etc.

  4. jgh

    If the NHS offers mental health psychiatric services, it should worry about the coherence of various markers like physical sex, claimed gender…

  5. and there was that point that blair white made recently…she has no problem calling her desire to present as a woman a mental illness. Her reasoning is if anxiety is a mental illness, if depression is a mental illness, that is brave to put on your bio, speak about and destigmatise, then trans surely is too.

  6. Writing in the i Paper, Patrick Strudwick talks to deputy House of Lords Speaker Ian Duncan about the death of his brother Sean, a trans man, from ovarian cancer.

    Lol, gay.

    trans men are automatically removed from GP surgeries’ lists of patients needing smear tests when they register as male

    And whose fault is that?

    Trick question, bigots. As always, the real world consequences of weirdos doing stupid shit is YOUR FAULT:

    Anti-trans activists are blaming us for this, claiming that if we didn’t change our gender markers that wouldn’t be a problem.

    More like if you hadn’t abandoned your wife and children to chase the masturbatory fetish lifestyle, this wouldn’t be a problem, no? “¯\_(ツ)_/¯“

    As ever, this is coming from a place of profound ignorance about trans people’s bodies and healthcare. If we don’t change our NHS gender markers then that throws the system into disarray too: our blood tests are returned as abnormal

    Definitely nothing abnormal about a chubby guy ingesting synthetic lady hormones made from pregnant horse piss to make his hairy moobs bigger.

    I know a few trans men who’ve been utterly humiliated by ignorant or openly transphobic healthcare workers, and that humiliation has very understandably made them wary and even avoidant of the NHS.

    Member Gene Wilder (who was, by all accounts, a wonderful and lovely man) playing Willy Wonka, when the fat kid falls into the river of chocolate Wonka warned him not to mess around with?

    “Help. Police. Murder.”

    I read somewhere that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who think there is too much suffering, and those who think there isn’t enough. The people railing against inclusive language and inclusive services are in the second camp.

    Idk if I’d put it that way.

    I’d put it this way: if the Christians, Jews, Mohammedans and Miscellaneous are right, there’s an infinity of suffering in Hell. Because – contrary to what you’ve been told by that fruity clergyperson who’s always lisping about climate change, refugees, and other stupid shit – God actually hates the wicked.

    And if you’re a miserable materialist, convinced that you’re little more than a quirk of neurochemistry in the randomly evolved body of a baldy monkey, the traditional evolutionary penalty for self-destructive delusions is still death.

    There’s a million ways to completely fuck up your life, but relatively few, and narrow, paths to being successful at humaning. None of them involve getting your genitals sawed off and stitched back into a Frankenstein parody of the sex you are not.

    JK Rowling (pbuh) is right. Terferian Jihad now.

  7. made them wary and even avoidant of the NHS.

    Isn’t that a positive given that we are told the NHS is seriously overwhelmed? Takes some of the pressure off.

  8. I don’t think trannies are being sent to Hell at the moment, Steve. Satan was so surprised by this particular human failing he hadn’t thought to provide the facilities to house them. An extension is being built but they’re having trouble with getting the zero carbon heat pumps to produce more than mildly comfortable. (Environmentalists are indeed amongst the Damned. By request of the management) So for the time being they’re being parked in Purgatory.

  9. “Sticking an anatomically male rapist into a women’s prison?”

    I’m a big fan of that, provided the wardens let nature take it’s course without interfering.
    I’ve a hunch that particular demand would rapidly become extremely rare…

  10. @The Meissen Bison

    “Is prostate screening something that men are routinely invited to undergo?”

    If you live in a “developed” country and have a prostate (regardless of what you call yourself), the answer is emphatically Yes. If you do and have and are not checked regularly, change your doctor or at least make a request. Or if gender-changed physiology and rhetoric makes the doctor unaware, also make the request.

    I do and have, and have been routinely checked for prostate problems since at least my 40s as part of normal health screening, annual or otherwise. I’m now 74 and I am still checked annually. All this has been automatic and expected, not by personal request.

    A friend of mine who is a few years older was diagnosed with prostate cancer about 20 years ago. It is a slow-growing cancer and treatable, and the treatments have improved with time. He would not now be alive had the screening not been done.

    Also, unlike breast cancer, there is a very low incidence of “false positives”; that is, it is rare that someone is diagnosed positively but really doesn’t have it. The most drastic treatments can lead to sexual impotence (if you also happen to have a cock and balls), but prevent death, at least from that cause. There may be less invasive treatments available now for cases that were once serious enough to warrant draconian measures. (Full disclosure: I AM a doctor, but not that kind. 🙂 Nor should you construe this as investment advice.)

  11. TMB

    Yes, in the USA, men over some age are expected to have prostate checks at a rate which depends on what’s found.

    The simplest check is the PSA test, which simply measures the amount of ‘prostate specific antigen’ there is in your blood. It used to be believed that a Big Number for this meant that you were most definitely at risk for having a cancerous prostate, and Steps Were Taken. In general, this meant perforation of your innocent, fresh, tender young prostate by a noisy needle biopsy and subsequent analysis of the cell samples. Plus of course, indoctrination that even if nothing was found now, this was a concerning situation and you have to come back soon and while you shouldn’t worry about prostate cancer, it is an increasing possibility, but that of course most such were slow growing and would kill you after you’d died of something else. Except for those that weren’t like that, and although there’s no reason to have concern, we really do need to see you for at least a PSA test in three months. But don’t worry.

    These days it is recognised that a high PSA in the absence of prior analysis says that perhaps there’s something up, and it’s worth checking; and it has been discovered that at least some prostates really don’t enjoy being repeatedly needled and turn sulky as a result, always delivering high PSA levels. Or even more confusing, high sometimes and low other times.

    But also these days, MRI practice has extended to prostate MRIs being practical and effective. At long last one can look inside instead of blindly jabbing hither and yon. There still appears to be the ability to easily confuse inflammation and cancer on the MRI, but at least you can actually see where any possibly nasty bits are. And then – science is wonderful – if there are suspicious bits, you can have an MRI-guided needle biopsy, wherein the man with the needle has the current position of your prostate and the needle (detected by ultrasound) and where the suspicious lumps were seen (from a file holding the MRI results) intermixed in real time in living colour on a giant TV screen that you, yourself can watch! Oh, rapture!

    With all this, the classic finger up the bum prostate fondle analysis method seems to be more a “oh, may as well check, it’s been a few years” sort of thing rather than every annual visit.

  12. And if you’re a miserable materialist . . .

    I’m a reasonably happy one.

    Although some bastard from an adjacent street has parked a big caravan opposite my house today . . .

  13. Maybe if they didn’t insist on insisting insistently that sex and gender are the same thing . . .

  14. I have regular PSA checks – now once a year but they were more often. The trend is currently lowish & level, which is OK. Cancerous cells were found in 2 biopsies some years ago but a MRI with a modern machine didn’t spot anything. I’m hoping that by the time the PSA starts rising there will be better treatments than surgery/radiation.

    Ecks: I think Steve is an Old Testament sort of guy. Lions™ seals the deal. So his God does hate the wicked. See Genesis 19 et al.

  15. It’s the problem of all the snowflakes believing that the world has to bend and accommodate them rather than reality being the other way around.
    It why it all looks like childish tantrums because that’s all it really is

  16. Thanks for the update BiTiN. It seems like good news that we have moved on the days when cynical medics joked that PSA stood for Promoting Stress and Anxiety!

  17. @jgh The NHS doesn’t care what your gender is, or anything else in your mind, all it cares medically is what your sex is.

    You’ve clearly not dealt with the NHS. It doesn’t care anything about you. Anything you may need from it is getting in the way of either tea and biscuits or golf. The NHS wants you to sod off — but of course keep paying their salaries like a good little tax slave.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *