Menstruation is exclusively a function of female reproductive anatomy

And menopause, and mental illness ...

This idiot seems to think it's like the color pink, or endless loads of laundry, or dishes, or child bearing. Yeah. They are JUST for women,. Because with a uterus and the right hormones you ain't having a period!

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH............................

If you've got a uterus and the right horomones and you menstruate, in this context that means you're female. So he's not wrong, maybe he just worded it wrong?? And he's not being sexist, either, he never said he was out to offend anyone or that women are for housekeeping. He's saying that menstruation is a female thing, and he's technically correct. If you become a woman, that means you're a woman, right?

If you are born with two X chromosomes then you are a female. Some females may have certain physical conditions or hormonal abnormalities which prevent them from ever menstruating. But yeah. He worded it way WRONG. Periods are not for men, nor do men menstruate. You can be a woman, who decides she wants to be a man, and dress as a man. That does not make you a menstruating man. It makes you a menstruating woman who is acting as a man. Men do not have periods. Period!

Exactly. If you're trans and have all the proper qualities in working order, you're female. You're not a guy anymore if you're... Not a guy anymore. If you menstruate, you're female. So i'm saying i agree with you (though i did mess up, i thought you were mad at the person who made the meme and not the dude with the sign. I can be stupid sometimes lol) but yes, i agree with you. Men do not have periods

"Trans women" are women only in cosmetic appearance, if even that. Their chromosomes and reproductive functionality is NOT female. They do NOT have functional mammary glands or uteruses.

Technically, you are correct. I agree with you in the logical sense, as not everything is 100% FEMALE... But "gender identity" remains to be completely illogical at times, so I guess we agree to disagree, fair? I just try to support equality and what keeps people happy and healthy... And away from the brink of nuclear war. Not to say wars would be fought over THIS per se, that's just how I go about the nature of these things.

I know you were probably joking lol

Not that kind of bleeding lol

IDK, they take female hormones and male hormone suppressors that make their bodies perform like real females.

No, they take hormones primarily to grow facial hair, or impede the growth of facial hair, among other cosmetic purposes.

No one gives a f**k what you think.

WHY DO PEOPLE WANT TO MENSTRUATE WE PRACTICALLY GIVE BIRTH TO THE LINING OF ONE OF OUR INTERNAL ORGANS ONCE A MONTH AND BLEED AND GET CRAMPS (WHICH ARE ACTUALLY INCREDIBLY PAINFUL, ALMOST DEBILITATING) AND GET BITCHY AND MISERABLE LIKE IF YOU WANNA BE TRANSGENDER ALL THE FREAKING POWER TO YOU REALLY BUT THE LAST THING YOU SHOULD WANT IS A PERIOD

Plus, if you've got a period still after becoming a man, something isn't right there. And if you're a trans woman, you're a woman now, so yes, menstruation is exclusively a function of the female anatomy...

"Trans women" are women only in cosmetic appearance, if even that. Their chromosomes and reproductive functionality is NOT female. They do NOT have functional mammary glands or uteruses.

You can get genitalia either removed or implanted or both. And from what I've seen about hormone therapy, it pretty much does the trick. A trans woman who has done everything she can has everything except the extra X chromosome, according to my research. (Apparently I can't grammar today lol) So yes, I guess you're correct. These things are technically "cosmetic". Do correct me if I'm wrong about any of this though, I'm trying to avoid an argument, not start one :)

Octavia_Melody - Appeal to novelty fallacy; appeal to the extremes fallacy.

We can reasonably define "humans" as, among other things, having two arms and two legs. If someone is missing an arm and/or a leg, does that mean they're not human? Of course not. Likewise, if a biological female doesn't have a functional uterus, she's still a female.

You can believe what you want. "Gender" is, in fact, objective and determined by chromosomes.

"Gender identity" can be whatever you want it to be. It can be subjective, fluid, malleable, non-binary, agender, whatever. I couldn't care less. It doesn't bother me when people push the boundaries of "gender identity". Just call it what it actually is: "gender identity".

What bothers me is when people try to make an objective classification into a subjective feeling. That is an affront to reason.

At what point does a trans-woman become a female? When s/he decides that s/he's female? When s/he dresses the part? When s/he undergoes hormone treatment? When s/he has the top half or the bottom half of the cosmetic surgery done? I would argue that cosmetic surgery and hormone treatment are merely cosmetic changes, basically taking "dress up" to extremes. The person is still the same as they were before, differing only in appearance. They still have male chromosomes. Nonetheless, if they want to "identify" as female, I have no problems with it. But it's all just a game of make-believe.

To put it another way: I'm a cisgender male. If I wear a skirt, or lipstick, or a wig, that doesn't make me a woman, does it? If I have surgery to make me look like a woman, that still doesn't make me a woman, does it? Both my biological gender and my "gender identity" remain unchanged.

And yes, you're correct about my misuse of the appeal to novelty fallacy. I was thinking in terms of "unusual or different" as definitions of "novel", but the "appeal to novelty fallacy" is limited in scope to "newness". Thus you merely presented an appeal to the extremes fallacy, or an edge-case fallacy.

>> Something can't really be called a mental illness if it doesn't negatively affect a person's life. <<

Call me crazy, but seeing oneself "trapped" in the wrong body with a diagnosis that correlates to 40% (IIRC) risk of suicide seems like the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to "negatively affecting a person's life".

To say otherwise (as you're doing) is dismissive and disrespectful to trans people.

>> I've heard that anorexia comparison before, and it's asinine. Anorexia causes undeniable physical harm. Being transgender doesn't cause undeniable physical harm in and of itself. <<

Sure, if you don't count suicide and other self-destructive behaviour (drug/alcohol abuse, cutting, etc) as self-harm. And you're qualifying "harm" as being "physical harm", which seems like you're trying to weasel out of the mental anguish and torment that these people inevitably suffer from perceiving themselves "trapped" in the wrong body. Again, the only person here who's dismissing the real struggles of trans people is you, while you point a finger at me for using words that don't fit your ideological agenda. You're more concerned about enforcing nonsensical definitions of words to suit your agenda than the real suffering of the people you claim to be concerned about.

>> You can call it "playing dress-up" all you want, but your thinly-veiled attempt to delegitimize it falls flat. <<

You're literally saying that "it doesn't negatively affect a person's life"... While accusing me of trying to delegitimise it??? Now THAT is crazy! I'm saying that it is a very real mental disorder that needs some type of treatment. We know that so-called "gender reassignment surgery" is not an effective treatment, because it does not significantly improve mood, suicide rates, or quality of life. Like I said... It's just playing dress-up.

>> Okay, I see what you're saying about gender versus gender identity. But back to my two questions: do you not realize there are mental and emotional aspects to gender as well as physical aspects? And if we took your brain out of your skull and put it into a female body, what would the result be? Would you feel like you're in the wrong body? <<

If you put my [male] brain in a female body, my brain would still be biologically male. Every living cell in my brain would contain an "X" and a "Y" chromosome. So my brain would, in fact, be in the wrong body.

>> Yeah, I'm sure that's it. You hit the nail on the head. <<

I'm glad we can agree on that.

>> You seem to think that all transgender people are suicidal or engage in self harm or substance abuse. <<

Not at all. Trans people do have much higher rates of self-harm and substance abuse than other groups. Denying this does not help trans people.

>> Yup. Makes perfect sense. I'm the one saying they aren't mentally ill, and I'm the one being "dismissive and disrespectful" to them. <<

Would it be helpful to anorexics to deny that they're suffering from mental illness? Or is it better to acknowledge that they are suffering from mental illness, and use a proper diagnosis to get them proper treatment?

You seem more concerned with not hurting anyones feelings (with a "mental illness" label), than helping them get the help they need.

>> Those things aren't inherently part of being transgender. Just because some transgender people do those things doesn't mean it is inherently part of being transgender. <<

Some??? You'll have a hard time finding any group of people who are more likely to commit suicide than trans people. Again, you want to dismiss the facts, in favour of not offending people with an uncomfortable label of "mental illness".

>> I'm doing no such thing. If someone is convinced they aren't in the right body, I don't think the solution is to try and make them believe they are against their will. <<

Who's proposing that anyone should be forced to "make them believe" anything? I'm saying that they have a mental illness, and recognising and accepting that is the 1st step towards effective treatment.

>> Nice projection. <<

You're still more concerned with revisionist etymology than people being properly diagnosed and treated, even if their lives depend on it.

>> I'm saying that it doesn't *inherently* negatively affect their life to the extent you seem to think it does. <<

Direct quote: "Something can't really be called a mental illness if it doesn't negatively affect a person's life."

Before you claim that it's out of context, that's a complete paragraph of yours. No mention of "inherently".

>> What type of treatment methods? <<

Unfortunately, dysphoric conditions are hellishly difficult to treat. Modern science doesn't have any good answers.

>> So if we put your brain into a female body and you felt you weren't in the right body, which "treatment method" would you prefer to help you get over it? <<

If you put my male brain into a female body, it would OBJECTIVELY be in the wrong body.

>> Once again, your comparison of transgender people to anorexics is asinine. <<

How so? Both are mental illnesses which cause a person to perceive their body differently from physical reality. Both are associated with increased rates of suicide and self-harm. And both are very difficult to effectively treat, in the sense that a person can accept them-self as they are.

>> It's not about me not wanting to hurt people's feelings. It's about me not being convinced that being transgender is necessarily a mental illness. Some transgender people struggle with it, some don't. <<

But you're asserting that they require treatment, of some sort; that they benefit from treatment. What requires treatment, if not an illness??? How can you say that they benefit from treatment, but they don't have an illness???

>> So again I ask, which "treatment method" would you prefer to help you get over it and accept that your body is female? <<

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick

"Sex and gender are not the same thing."

Based on any natural sciences (ie, "hard science"), "gender" is 100% synonymous with "sex", in terms of defining objective reproductive roles within a species. Find me a consensus among formally trained biologists who agree that "sex and gender are not the same thing". I'll wait...

If gender actually did refer to subjective feelings, as you claim, then the term "gender identity" would be redundant.

The myth that gender is a social construct originated in the 1970s on the fringes of 2nd wave feminism, based on the theory that if we could abolish genders, then there would be no gender discrimination. In pursuit of that fringe ideological goal (which presupposes that any objective difference between groups of people is a form of prejudice and therefore inherently oppressive) fringe feminists (and those who have been ensnared as pawns in their game) have exploited people with gender dysphoria for the purposes of pushing their agenda, which ultimately aspires to "abolish gender".

Great theory. What next...? Maybe we can "abolish weather", so people aren't displaced by hurricanes? Maybe we can "abolish units of measuring weight", so no one will be fat? Maybe we can "abolish colour", so no one will be discriminated against for their skin colour? It's all part of an egalitarianism-gone-wrong push against objectivity.

Playing dress-up is a game of make-believe. Surgery and hormone treatment just take that game "to the next level", providing cosmetic changes. Nonetheless, if someone wants to "identify as" a gender that is not consistent with their actual/real/biological gender, that's fine. But it's their "gender identity" that's malleable, not their "gender", which is determined by their chromosomes.

>> Playing dress-up is a game of make-believe. But being transgender is not playing dress-up or make-believe. <<

Gender dysphoria is a mental illness. "Treating" a mental illness with clothing and cosmetic surgery is playing dress-up. It's just as crazy as treating anorexics with liposuction.

>> It sounds like you think gender only involves physical traits like genitalia. <<

Yes, "gender", is an objective classification, although I'd consider chromosomes rather than genitalia to be the correct way to objectively assess it.

>> Do you not realize that there are mental and emotional aspects as well? If we took your brain out of your skull and put it into a female body, what would the result be? Would you feel like you're in the wrong body? <<

Here, you're taking about "gender identity", which can be subjective. That's NOT "gender", which is objective. Again, you're trying to make a word mean something that is not consistent with established definitions. It's like trying to twist "racism" to mean "institutional racism", as blacks often do to push an agenda that "blacks can't be racist"; or twisting "sexism" to mean "institutional sexism", as women often do to push an agenda that "women can't be sexist". It's all bullshit new-speak that INTENTIONALLY uses words out of context to pursue an ideological agenda.

If you want to talk about emotion, feelz, and subjective "gender identity" assessments, all you need to do is call it what it is: "gender identity". Doing so is an accurate qualification of "gender" to make it reflect your use of the word in the (subjective) context that you're using it in. Refusing to do so is divisive, and ultimately building walls instead of building bridges.

So the question is: Why do you want to re-define long established definitions, rather than just use terminology that everyone can agree with? (Hint: Because you {along with the trans-community} are being played by fringe elements of feminism in their quest to "abolish gender").

>> And your "abolish weather and color" example is clearly a reductio ad absurdum, because I proposed nothing close to that. <<

You may also not endorse "abolition of gender", but you're a "useful idiot" endorsing an exploitative agenda that's being employed towards that equally absurd end.

>> Sex and gender are not the same thing. Sex is physical (genitalia, etc). Gender has more to do with how a person feels and identifies mentally and emotionally. Someone can be physically male yet have the neurological makeup of a female (and vice versa). I don't know why this is such a difficult concept for so many people to grasp. <<

The historically and scientifically established definition of "gender" is and has long been synonymous with "sex", as an OBJECTIVE classification of a living organism's reproductive function. If you've ever taken a basic biology class, you'd know this.

What you're describing about "how a person feels" is a SUBJECTIVE self-assessment that is best described as "gender identity".

I've pointed out previously why there's an ideological push to redefine the historically and scientifically established definition of "gender", and you seem happy to just let yourself be played, against reason, logic, and natural science.

What's wrong with not trying to redefine "gender" for wonky ideological goals, and instead just use the term "gender identity" to describe the SUBJECTIVE classification of how a person considers them-self?

>> And no, being transgender is not "a game of make-believe." <<

I never said that being transgender a game of make-believe. But playing dress-up and pretending to be something that you're not is make-believe. Surgery and hormone treatment take that game to "the next level". Thus, the so-called "treatment" is often a game of make-believe.

Think of it this way... There are people who "believe" that they are Abraham Lincoln, or Jesus Christ, or Napoleon Bonaparte... If someone "believes" that they are Abraham Lincoln, that doesn't make it real. If they dress the part, that doesn't make it real. If they put effort into looking the part, that still doesn't make it real. They are suffering from a mental illness, and it doesn't help them to tell them that they're fine, and other people are crazy for not understanding them. Just like anorexics and trans people, they suffer from a mental illness. I don't mean this to sound disparaging, but in a strict clinical sense they suffer from delusions. We don't effectively treat any of these delusions with clothing or cosmetic surgery or preferred pronouns.

btw, my preferred pronoun is "Mr President". If you don't call me by my preferred pronoun, that's hate-speech. I'm not crazy, people just don't understand me ;)

btw, whether or not a trans-woman is "really" a woman is a contentious topic, even (especially!) among feminists.

>> Being transgender, unlike anorexia, does not cause a person to destroy their body. <<

Sure... Chopping off one's sexual organs is totally not destroying their body ;)

>> You keep calling transgenderism a mental illness. Do you think homosexuality is a mental illness, too, like people used to believe? <<

Not at all. To the extent that homosexuals suffer from being homosexual, it's pretty much exclusively a mismatch between how they see themselves and how they think society/family/church wants them to be. Trans people, OTOH, suffer just as much after "treatment" as they did before "treatment". This indicates that (1) the problem is psychological/neurological in nature, and (2) there aren't any good/effective treatments known, just like all dysphoric mental illnesses.

>> Not all transgender people want to get SRS, and that's their choice. If they choose to undergo surgery or hormone therapy, it is to bring their physical body in harmony with their gender identity. <<

You mean, to bring their physical *appearance* closer to the gender identity. But I do want to thank you for using the correct term, "gender identity".

>> I keep asking which treatment you would prefer if your brain were put into the body of a female and I can't understand why you won't answer. If gender is indeed determined by physical traits, you would have the physical traits of a woman, which means you would be a woman. If I looked at you I would see a woman. That means you're a woman, right? <<

Uggh... I keep giving you answers, you just don't like them. My brain is a male brain, fed since birth with male hormones, and every living cell in it contains both X and Y chromosomes. If you put my brain in a female body, it would IN FACT be in the wrong body.

Think of it this way... I'm a cisgender guy. Putting me in a dress doesn't make me a woman. Putting makeup on me doesn't make me a woman. Implanting breasts on me doesn't make me a woman. Putting my brain in a woman's body would not make me identify as a woman. But if we had technology to do brain transplants, maybe that could "cure" trans people...?

>> Except they aren't pretending. This is who they are. The word pretending clearly implies the person knows it's not real. <<

Of course they know it's not real. That's one of the reasons why suicide rates, depression, mood, quality of life, etc are NOT significantly improved by SRS/GRS.

>> Sex reassignment surgery is not "chopping off one's sexual organs" <<

Oh, so men keep their p**ises and women keep their breasts??

>> *Some* transgender people feel the same after SRS. Not all. <<

*Most.*

>> The point I'm trying to make is that evidence suggests that transgender people have a brain more similar to that of the gender they identify as <<

That may be, but GRS/SRS is still not a statistically effective treatment.

>> You seem to be saying that physical gender is determined 100% by chromosomes. I don't agree because I don't believe it's that clear cut. The evidence does not support that conclusion. <<

What evidence...?

>> You'd also have to account for people who are neither XX or XY (and yes, such people actually exist) <<

Intersex is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about 99.95% of people who are biologically male or female.

>> For some they are. <<

Yes, for some. But for most, that's not the case. That's a clue that that GRS/SRS is not an *effective* treatment.

>> Except for their brains literally being closer to that of the gender with which they identify. <<

That's a statistical correlation, at best. It may be just a sign of brain disorder which just happens to make them "identify" in a certain way... Like a lot of delusions and dysphorias, which are caused by brain disorders.

>> I also hope you realize that not all transgender people have or suffer from gender dysphoria. <<

What??? What other reason would a person have to change their gender? It's trendy? They're on the run from the CIA?

>> People who say they are Abraham Lincoln or Napoleon can clearly be shown to not be those people. It's an absurd analogy. <<

And people who perceive themselves to not be the sex they were born as can also be quantitatively and objectively also shown to not be who they think they are.

>> Why does the evidence show that a transwoman's brain is more similar to a cisgender woman's brain than a cisgender man's brain? <<

You're confusing the cause and the symptoms. If someone is biologically a male, but they identify as being female, it's likely BECAUSE their brain is structurally/functionally more like a woman's brain than a man's brain... Ignoring that such an assertion of different brain structure/function between males and females is considered sexist in certain circles.

Anyway, abnormal brain structure/function is common with mental illnesses. We can look at brain scans and very reliably pick out the psychopaths, the anorexics, certain pathologies of depression, etc. Abnormal brain structure does not exclude trans people from a clinical psych diagnosis; if anything, it confirms that they suffer from a neurological problem, like most/all other dysphoric conditions.

He doesn't choose to have a period, he was assigned a female reproductive anatomy at birth, and now identifies as male.

If I ever met a man that claimed he had menstuation, I’d slap him out of his ignorance.

i feel like you guys dont really understand what that person is saying

For that time of the month when you should be seeing your therapist.

Social Justice Warrior