I Would Like To Propose A Solution To The Trans Threads Problem

Thats great wappers

I am glad your DD is more comfortable in herself

Wow wappers. You are an brilliant mother. so good to hear that your daughter is happier. These 'professionals' have a lot to answer for. Good for you foe challenging them. MN enlightened me to the reality of the Trans debate too. Previously I would have taken the classic liberal view. It's too important to be stifled. All the best to you and your daughter

Thank you! It's horrifying that despite the number of professionals involved in trying to help her, I was the only person to raise the question of why she felt this way. Which I wouldn't have done to the degree I did had I not been a member of MN.

The alternative just doesn't bear thinking about

wappers that's an amazing post. It's so worrying that insufficiently-tested medical interventions are proposed for children before considering that stereotyped expectations of behaviour could be the cause of their deep unhappiness and depression.

I'm delighted your DD is happy in herself. Good for her and good for you - you sound like a fantastic parent!

"Izzy, I did not start this thread as a stealth debate."

Dione, if you really wanted this thread to be a neutral request, surely your proposed sub topics would have been something like "trans sceptical" and "trans supportive" and not used words like "fuck trans" and "hate".

As a PP said, this is a way to get in the slur that posters concerned about the impact on born women are "haters"

Wappers, so glad your DD got some good support from you.

That's fantastic. Very happy that you daughter is able to be happy in her own skin.

I just want to add my plea for this topic not to be stifled, dismissed or confined to a specific topic. Many of you have no idea how very important this issue is unless it directly influences your life.

6 months ago I deregged my account after many years here because I felt distressed at what I believed to be a culture of transphobia on MN. It upset me personally because my 11 year old DD at that time identified as a boy. She had already announced the year before that she liked girls, and she's always been repelled by anything "girly". She had made some attempts to swallow battery acid because "she hated herself and would never fit in" so naturally when she expressed her desire to "be a boy" I clung to the hope that this was how I could help her be herself and be happy.

I commented on one or two threads here at the beginning but as the trans thing exploded I felt overwhelmed and attacked. So I left.

I remembered the discussions though, and it provoked in me a desire to prove that this wasn't down to my DD being damaged by the patriarchal view of women or gendered norms. So alongside consulting the GP, Ed Psych, a psychiatric referral and a referral to a gender clinic, I set out working hard to establish with her that her biological sex had no influence over how masculine or feminine she could be or whether she liked boys or girls. I showed her examples of very feminine men and masculine women. Eventually it became clear that her desire to be a boy was because she felt she didn't conform to 'girl', because she felt girls would like her more if she was a boy and because she felt that boys get a better deal in general.

I felt sick to my stomach that the consultant was discussing hormone blockers at the time I discovered that my child was not suffering from dysphoria, she was suffering from getting a shitty deal as a female person who wasn't straight and wasn't feminine but was too young to realise that she wasn't alone and wasn't 'wrong'. I had genuinely thought my children were immune to it as I have always considered myself a feminist and thought my parenting reflected that.

DD is now a girl who is growing breasts and is fine with that. She wears boxer shorts and boys clothes and cropped hair and is often mistaken for a boy which she finds hilarious.

If it weren't for the threads I read here my child at 11, would have been on hormone blockers and in therapy working towards transition. At 11. It took the women here to help me figure out that my daughter didn't want a penis, she wanted to stop being made to feel weird because she wasn't feminine. I can never ever thank you all enough and I just want you all to know that what you are doing here matters.

But these are issues that cannot simply be nicely compartmentalised - they are woven into everything because they affect everyone. Some of us have learned a lot about things they'd never thought about before and as one of those people I'm always open to learning why people think the way they do. I've changed my own views as a result.

You can't start confining trans issues to one section any more than you can stop people talking about DHs, men, women, DCs etc.

Ok Dione, thank you.

This is so true. There is no feminism on MN anymore, just outrage about Trans people on social media.

Just for info on the feminism board at the moment are lengthy threads about whether Porn can ever be ethical (300 posts), deprogramming out patriarchal norms (300 posts), family annihilation in Ireland (200 posts), whether we need women only gyms (100 posts), whether anyone's is to blame for men who don't do housework (100 posts), the fact rape was legal in marriage until 1991 (40 posts but only a couple of hours old).
But yep, no feminism to see here.

I don't know why people say this is niche feminism

It suits their agenda to pretend that only big old TERFs think this way. To claim that they are the reasonable ones.

Not just loos either, changing rooms too. Gah. How is this allowed?

I don't know why people say this is niche feminism. I just posted on the other thread about my child's university that assures access to single sex facilities by male transwomen without any surgery, hormones or physical transition. So that's all the female students at that university who could be alone in a ladies loo late at night with a man. Or two men, or three men, who all say they're women. How is that niche? That's thousands of women.

IPity, first you say 'cotton ceiling' is just one workshop a few years ago attended by 7 transwomen, then concede that Paris Lees might have said something but who cares what they think, now you've been shown evidence that the concept is still current and support for it is rather more widespread, you say it's just screenshots of social media. That's it.

This whole recent flurry of trans threads came about because of a deleted thread about the actions of Ada J Wells, recently resigned LGBT+ officer at Edinburgh uni:

Ada, who is trans and prefers to be called “they”, labelled women with vaginas as “cuntscum”, has also called women who refuse to have sex with gender-neutral people with a penis – like Ada – transphobes, and has advocated for them to be expelled from the University of Edinburgh.

This is not just a bunch of tweets and facebook froth it's affecting the real lives of lesbian women - it's doing them harm. Can you imagine being 18 years old, away from home for the first time, tentatively coming out as lesbian because uni is the first environment you've come across where it even looks like it might be safe to do so, only to be met with this from the officer of the very organisation that is supposed to be there to support you?

Not everybody is affected to the same extent by trans issues in their everyday real life. It depends on your sexuality, where you live, what sort of job you do / where you study, where your DC go to school, which services you need to access, the people you mix with, your family ... I can see how people might think this is all just some weird internet spat if they haven't come across it in real life - I mean, it's almost unbelievable, isn't it?

The screenshots are targeted at young lesbians. Social media is massively important to the demographic affected. Me - I could care less, but then I'm not 19.

Magdalen Bern has been no-platformed and ostracized from student LGBT politics for saying that there's no such thing as a lesbian with a penis. The no-platforming and censorship were in the real world, not on social media. You might watch her .

Saying that people can't change sex is enough to lose you all your friends in some circles. You see it a lot on tumblr and reddit - young women confiding their gender critical thoughts, scared to say anything publicly because being branded a TERF is social death. And they're the ones being bullied into sex with men, sex they don't want.

And then, of course, there's the transing of children and young adults. The explosion in numbers and the total recklessness of health professionals is deeply concerning. It's not a specifically feminist issue. It's a potential concern for all parents.

What you don't seem to appreciate, paxilla - which is fair enough if you don't give a shit - is that criticism of the trans is silenced in forums all over the internet. Places where you can say "Paris Lees is male" are becoming very few and far between. And most feminist sites are all too happy to conciliate the trans who are so much more oppressed than we ordinary women.

But it's way more than just the internet. Women's sports have caved in - men can now compete if they're on hormones, and our own government is working on various bits of trans-friendly legislation. Kids are being given off-label hormones and mutilating surgery.

So, yes, paxilla - a lot of us think it's a bit of an emergency, that we must fight back before it becomes illegal to point out that a transwoman isn't actually female. We are being erased, and I think it's extremely important. On a brighter note, about 1,000 MN posters agree, so I guess we'll cope without you.

This is an online site. What is she supposed to link to, a set of meeting minutes from Feminism Inc AGM?

The feminist board is not mainly trans rights. I am however laughing at the irony of some posters on here suggesting we should keep trans stuff to one board, like women's rights, and others bitching about how they've had to hide women's rights because of all the trans threads.
It amazes me how many feminists post here who don't post in the feminism section and comment how we are doing it all wrong.

But I wonder why you would call yourself a feminist

Because there is a whole world of feminism outside of the trans-fixated of the internet. In fact, there is even feminism beyond the internet. Really.

I used to, venus, under a different name. Threads get around 5-18 responses unless they are trans threads, then they run into the 100s.

This is so true. There is no feminism on MN anymore, just outrage about Trans people on social media. All that site that Prawn is linking to is just screenshots of social media. That's it. That's what passes for feminist activism these days.

I know it is different on other sites

That's an understatement. You are not being silenced, you are perfectly free to disagree with any of these points. You can't silence the views you don't like though, unlike on those wonderful "inclusive" sites. Still, of course that's not as important as people having a personal opinion that some of your views aren't particularly feminist.

I am not offended, just exasperated. I am however offended at having my feminist credentials questioned whenever I say something on a trans thread.

I know it is different on other sites, but on MN feminists who do not agree that this is the most important issue in the women's rights movement are being silenced quite effectively. Worse still, they are told they are not actually feminists.

Yes, Venus, you're absolutely right to say that most commercial so-called feminist sites have now been gutted of critical thought on the matter. Feministing and Everyday Feminism are packed full of "cis" and "transphobia" mentions. They've swallowed the trans agenda whole. Not a feminist thought among them. As soon as I see that X is "centring transwomen in their feminism" I translate that as "X wants to please men".

If you doubt the ugly truth that MtTs are constantly trying to bully and coerce lesbians into "lesbian" relationships with their "lady sticks", Paxillin, check this out. N.B. doesn't work well on the phone, lots of screenshots. Or watch all those cotton ceiling videos on Youtube. It's not like MtTs are even embarrassed about doing this shit.

It's everywhere, and young lesbians are under siege - both from MtTs and also from pressure to become men themselves. And if you don't care, that's fine. No obligation. But I would wonder why you'd call yourself a feminist.