A Man Can Never Be A True Women.

You write; "I think that for the most part you have read my arguments accurately." Good. And the entire basis of your argument is that if someone claims they are something - then they are that something. Regardless of biology, physiology, common sense. If they claim it - they are it. Thus for you, a man can indeed be a 'women'. A women can indeed be 'man'. If they think they are - they are. Because, after all, "who are you to tell them otherwise", right? It's not a very rational or logical reaction and where do you draw the line? Do you remain in silence and not talk about the elephant in the room when the next person makes a delusional claim to be something they are not? Do you validate their delusion and whatever you do - never contradict it for 'fear of hurting their feelings'? This seems like a path way to insanity itself. You can simply 'invent your own reality'. Doesn't need to be grounded in hard science or biology - so long as someone believes it. You write; "Thus far, I believe that I am the only one who has illustrated a viable or consistent criterion for Womanhood. I have shown that bio-female is at least not sufficient to denote womanhood, and indeed not even necessary.." I think your position is as above - that someone can create their own reality, even if it goes against biological reality. Not a biological women? No problem in your perception, for one can simply be a 'non bio women'. Whatever that really means. What does it mean? What is a non biological female? Aren't we just back to this being code for a male that has had his penis cut off, some fake boobs grafted on, and spends the rest of their life on a range of risky hormone tablets? Is that what a 'non bio women' is? Do they even need to lose the penis? Can they keep it and still be a 'non bio women'? I guess so - I believe that's the case with Jenner. This is clearly insanity. There is no such thing as a women or female that isn't biological. All there is as an alternative to that are males that are suffering from a gender delusion and who try to create the facsimile of a female by way of surgery. No matter how much surgery they have or how good they might believe they may look - they remain a man. You said; "With regard to Facebook gender preference options I see that this distresses you and likely many others. This further leads me to believe that we may be speaking across purposes. This diversity of identity possibilities does not describe physical attribute or birth sex. Rather these are statements of identity. By analogy, if I said I were a Caucasian Hindu, this would be atypical, but not a contradiction. Indeed, if we look at Facebook religious identities, we find even greater diversity. While in both the cases of race and religion, bio-sex and gender identity, we find a correlation, in neither cse do we find that these statements are analogous." There are many things that truly 'distress' me. This ^^ would not be one. I am not remotely 'distressed' by it, I just consider it a good example of the sheer lunacy that is being pushed as the 'new normal'. With FB being a social media site used by millions, it serves as an excellent example of this insanity manifesting through the conduit of social media. If FB had done this as an April fool joke it would have been a good parody or joke. The fact that they created it as a real thing makes it even more amusing in some ways. Maybe history will look back one day with curiosity and reflect on this as being the Age of The Delusional - the period in history in which society went through a phase of outwardly endorsing someone's personal delusion. Trans sexuals put themselves through all that surgery and risk and for what? They can never be what they are chasing. Deep down inside they know it. They also aren't stupid - they know many of those who will say to their face that they now accept them as a 'women' probably don't. Knowing this means that they will never feel entirely fulfilled, and no amount of people saying otherwise to them will ever remove their own doubts - and it is natural they would always go on doubting their own authenticity - since they are passing themselves off as something they evidently are not and never were. Why not grow up as a society and realise that the more mature way to deal with people that have delusions such as this is to counsel them to accept what they are, rather than cut bits off and parade them on TV and pretend they are a 'women'? The sky is not going to fall in if you just tell them the truth and advise against surgery based on that truth, advise them toward counseling to accept what they are in ACTUAL reality, not in some reality created by way of a surgeon's knife. It is almost cruel and unethical for a billion dollar industry to exist that literally exploits those who are suffering from an obvious pathology and mental condition. Even if you wanted to argue that it's the patients 'choice', still it does not seem ethical to me. Ever heard of Apotemnophilia? It's a pathology in which a person wants (whatever the pathogen may be), to have a healthy limb cut off. This is obviously not normal nor healthy. We would surely not encourage it or promote it, and we would surely consider it unethical for a surgeon to do it. I don't see a great deal of difference between that condition and those that have a pathology that they are another sex and who go as far as surgery. "Apotemnophilia is a neurological disorder characterized by the intense and long standing desire for amputation of a specific limb. It can be associated with Body integrity identity disorder (BIID) in which otherwise sane and rational individuals express a strong and specific desire for the amputation of a healthy limb or limbs. Apotemnophilia has features in common with somatoparaphrenia. Some apotemnophiles seek surgeons to perform an amputation or purposefully injure a limb in order to force emergency medical amputation..." https://en.wikipedia.org... And what about those that were so very convinced that they were another gender......only to plead to be restored again? Doesn't that demonstrate to you that you're not dealing with a demographic of people that know what is best for them? Did they just "think wrong"? I'd invite people to listen to this man in his own words. He is probably better qualified to speak than either of us. You said? "In response to the assertion that up to twenty schools a year are inviting transsexuals to speak in school, I would have everyone read the above article at the given URL from "Live Science," which my opponent (not I) cited. The article is illuminating and clearly shows that our society treats transsexual persons less than desirably.." Not invited for free. Paid for and by state schools. That's the public purse. Agenda's such as that have no place in state school let alone at a cost. The parents that objected have every right to - it is natural to do so. They want their children to go to school to read and write(and learn hard sciences). There is approx a 20% illiteracy rate for school leavers in the UK. I'd sooner every penny was spent on addressing that to get it to 0% rather than a penny of it be spent to get some man in to speak about getting his penis cut off to little children. "SIR, in what way does the exposure of children to another lifestyle constitute child abuse? In what way does proclaiming oneself anything, denote the harm of on looking children? I understand that you have a distain for the sight of transsexuals, you have made this clear, but to assert that their speech in schools is in anyway comparable to wantonly harming or abusing a child is to level a heinous accusation based solely on personal prejudice. I will not hear it." The children that attend school are not there to hear someone relate to them how they like to wear a dress, a wig and how they had their penis cut off. This has no place in any school, no place in any state school, and the school head should be fired for sanctioning that tax payers money and school budget should be spent on this. No one wants a tiny % of the population foisting and pushing their 'lifestyle' onto children at school. Parents do not want it. Only those with an agenda want it. They want to brainwash and confuse very young children so that they can be 'just like them'. Where would you draw the line? What would you NOT expose children to at school? What would you NOT spend tax payers money on at school? Your measure is that if any parent does not want their child exposed to this at school they are a 'bigot'. Your measure is that if a parent would sooner time and money were invested on literacy rates that they are 'prejudiced'. In my experience people have to use such labels and tactics when they have run out of any true arguments for their case. The topic was not 'Your Perception Of My Alleged Disdain'. If it had been then your perceptions of me would be on point. But that's not the topic so it's not on point. Did you know that the chimp shares 98% of it's DNA with humans, incidentally? In fact you could definitely say that there is more biological and physiological evidence to endorse the man that "claims he's a chimp inside a human body" than there is for a man to claim they are a "women inside a male body". ** Trans gender Characters May Win Emmys, But Trans gender People Hurt Themselves "Asking a surgeon to modify a person"s appearance is simply a socially acceptable means of self-mutilation. If we examine the medical definition of self-injury, we get a better understanding of why changing genders is a mental health issue. The Mayo Clinic defines self-injury as "an unhealthy way to cope with emotional pain, intense anger and frustration." As someone who has undergone gender change, I know that people who indulge in self-destructive behaviors and suicide ideation have mental issues that beg to be treated and resolved.." http://thefederalist.com... The insanity of hormone blockers for kids One controversial treatment for children with gender dysphoria is the administration of drugs called hormone blockers to delay puberty. The practice is gaining traction without any scientific proof that it is appropriate or effective, and despite the evidence that it can be harmful: Most children with gender dysphoria will not remain gender dysphoric after puberty The FDA has not approved hormone blockers for use in trans gender children"not even for experimental use. A search for one hormone blocker, Lupron, shows that people are reporting serious long-term, debilitating side effects from having used the drug. Given these facts, why would anyone inject these drugs into children? Doctors and parents want to help the child cope with the distress he or she is experiencing. Is relief of adolescent distress really worth the risk? Most will grow out of the dysphoria. Isn't there some way to work through the distress than experimenting on our children? [1] J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2008 Dec;47(12):1413-23. doi: 10.1097/CHI.0b013e31818956b9., "Psychosexual outcome of gender-dysphoric children", Wallien MS, Cohen-Kettenis PT., Department of Medical Psychology, Graduate School of Neurosciences, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands SWEDISH STUDY A long-term study of 324 sex-reassigned persons in 2003 in Sweden concluded: "Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity [diseased state] than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism.........." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... SEX CHANGES ARE NOT EFFECTIVE, SAY RESEARCHERS There is no conclusive evidence that sex change operations improve the lives of transsexuals, with many people remaining severely distressed and even suicidal after the operation, according to a medical review conducted exclusively for Guardian Weekend tomorrow. The review of more than 100 international medical studies of post-operative transsexuals by the University of Birmingham 's aggressive research intelligence facility (Arif) found no robust scientific evidence that gender reassignment surgery is clinically effective. The Guardian asked Arif to conduct the review after speaking to several people who regret changing gender or believe that the medical care they received failed to prepare them for their new lives. They explain why they are unhappy with their sex change and how they cope with the consequences in the Weekend magazine tomorrow (July 31). Chris Hyde, the director of Arif, said: "There is a huge uncertainty over whether changing someone's sex is a good or a bad thing. While no doubt great care is taken to ensure that appropriate patients undergo gender reassignment, there's still a large number of people who have the surgery but remain traumatised - often to the point of committing suicide." Arif, which advises the NHS in the West Midlands about the evidence base of health care treatments, found that most of the medical research on gender reassignment was poorly designed, which skewed the results to suggest that sex change operations are beneficial. International research suggests that 3-18% of them (transsexuals) come to regret switching gender. Research from the US and Holland suggests that up to a fifth of patients regret changing sex. http://www.theguardian.com...