TERF

LGBT really makes no sense. LGB is about sexual orientation. T is not. If you are Trans and LG or B, you are included.

I have heard some Trans people say they should be included in the LGB umbrella, because LGBT people have historically socialised in the same bars. They forget that historically LGBT people were all at the very margins of society and most bars wouldn't have them. Most LGB people had to hang out at bars where everyone at the margins of society hung out including prostituted women and petty criminals.

Stonewall in the UK lobbies for LGB people. It has been heavily criticised for not including Trans as a specific category it lobbies for, I think Stonewall have got it right.

Forgot to say, for all the liberals and progressives out there. The co-opting of children into the trans movement must be exposed for the blatant homo and lesbo phobia that it clearly is.

We were all happy to leave behind the days when lesbianism and homosexuality were considered mental health issues and that gays and lesbians needed to 'be fixed' . Right? I means we were weren't we?

Well certain elements of transactivism are taking us right back there. Non gender conforming children do not need to 'be fixed'. They do not need their puberty interfered with with drugs (the point of which is to make it easier for them to 'pass' as trans adults and make genital cosmetic surgery easier). They do not need to be told they are trans and encouraged to have surgery as soon as legally possible. They do not need drugs which will affect their growth, sexual development and fertility (does that ring any homophobic/eugenic bells??). They do not need to be experimented on. All of the above amounts to a medical scandal and IMO, state sanctioned child abuse.

What gender non conforming children need is for society to relax ridiculous constructed rigid gender rules. Let children be children. Non gender conforming children need time and space and to be supported and listened to. They do not need drug happy and scalpel happy medics. And any child who wishes to cut off or mutilate their own genitals needs to be sensitively examined by an experienced professional to establish whether they are victims of sexual abuse and or bullying. It is not unusual for victims of childhood sexual abuse to wish to leave or disfigure the bodies the abuse happened in.

I know several non gender conforming lesbians who say that they would have been diagnosed as having "Gender identity disorder" when they were young and who are immensely glad that non gender conforming children were left alone to grow up gay in their day. There are a lot of gay people and lesbians in particular who want the T off the LGBT acronym as they object to the homophobia in much of the trans movement and do not want to be associated with it (obviously).

Gender is a social construction. Now it appears to have morphed into a medical disorder . It is no coincidence that countries such as Iran which have strict gender rules and roles and which are deeply homophobic have very high rates of Genital Reassignment Surgery. Men are not allowed to have sex with other men but they are allowed to redefine themselves as women and then have sex with other men.

Maybe Mini - I think that wanting to be someone can be extremely possessive, really it is wanting to own someone. Wanting to own their very person and identity and I find that disturbing.

I don't know if figures exist for how many trans have surgery but I agree with others that ball park figures suggest it is far from the majority. I don't blame people for not wanting to put themselves through it and I disagree with Genital Reassignment Surgery. As says Sheila Jeffreys, I think it is body mutilating and needs to be questioned on human rights and Hippocratic Oath grounds. I also think the name of the surgery is misleading - it is genital cosmetic surgery.

Of course the big worry in all this is children. I am increasingly angry at the hijacking of children that goes on in the name of "transactivism". Non gender conforming children are being used to argue that trans people are born not made. The vast majority of non gender conforming children go on to be gay or lesbian. Or at least they do if they are not co-opted into the adult trans movement and given puberty blockers and told they are trans.

There is a lot that needs to be discussed out in the open and the death threats and slurs such as TERF need to stop. Many of the transactivists that I have come across appear to have serious psychological issues and we cannot politely ignore that whilst changing laws for them and medically experimenting on minors in their name.

What I find fascinating about this is how gendered basic things like movement are - things you would think are innate... Boy's body language doesn't get policed like that

I think it does, it's the flip side. Men and boys are expected to perform masculinity, to the extent that men who don't, feel less like men. And other men sure as hell notice when a man is being one of the "boys" This is the way in which patriarchy entrenches gender binary positions, and is now both antagonistic to trans but the social force that propels it.

What I find interesting is that trans seems to do two contradictory things, it breaks down the gender binary and it perpetuates it. It reinforces gender stereotyping when men transition and fully try to adopt "femininity" because it supports the hypothesis that men and women should look and behave differently. It seems to challenge gender when trans people pick and choose, are fluid or refuse to fully transition. Although this then gives rise to the problem of shared spaces and safety.

Most feminists agree that we perform gender, it isn't innate or natural, and we need to challenge stereotyping. So I have some sympathy with this idea that men should be able to wear a dress and call themselves Sarah. I have a problem when Sarah decides to perform gender because this often caricatured expression reinforces the gendered way in which we should act, or at worst is used as a way to belittle and piss take the ways in which women are thought to behave.

I also think there is a correlation between the rise in men transitioning or adopting the gender identity of woman with the rise in young women now self identifying as bisexual. It could be argued that social forces shape sexuality and therefore discourage deviation from heterosexuality, and that human's are now far from what Marx would have called species being, we are the sum and total now of the human made social forces that condition us. The same argument can be made to show how new forces within advanced capitalism has commoditised the female form, privileging female beauty over male, in its quest to create new segmented markets. Now, when most products are sold with sex, and women are increasingly objectifying themselves and other women, it is only a small leap to suggest that this conditions our sexuality. This same process, I believe has given rise to the further entrenchment of gender roles but also to the rise in men seeking to act out their sexual fantasy as "the objectified woman" or to transition. The objectified woman, is the woman who displays her subordinated status by behaving and looking like the "object" in almost comically exaggerated ways, enhanced ,airbrushed, using obviously sexual body language and clothing to enhance her status as sexual object. Desirable, available, but aloof staring back at us from every paper, magazine and webpage, men desire her, she is the epitome of success, little wonder we have men wanting to be her.

Transgender is an umbrella term. In reality there are big differences between the MtoF who has full surgery, before transitioning was an effeminate gay man and just wants to quietly get on with their life; and the MtoF who has no surgery or hormones, is a "lesbian" and spends their time lobbying viciously for Trans rights.

Thanks, that's interesting!

Oh it's all so complex... I don't think there is an easy answer but it would be nice if trans activists and the more uncompromising radfems (and I have seen horrible hate speech on both sides) could try to understand the other point of view a bit better.

Some FtoM also have hysterectomys and double masectomies. I have no stats, but just reading FtoM's talking, many have had double masectomies, but not genital surgery.

In terms of Trans people's health, it is concerning that so many young Trans people on the internet talk about buying hormones over the internet, rather than going through a Dr.

The majority of Trans people seem to take hormones. No idea how many MtoF have breast implants. I did read on an NHS site that about 20% of MtoF have genital surgery and about 3% of FtoM.

It would be really interesting to get a sense - even the vaguest sense - of what proportion of people identifying as trans have been/are going through full physical transition, partial physical transition (e.g. hormones but no surgery) or no physical transition at all.

Does anyone have any statistics?

Briar, I think a lot of people assume that the transgender people of today are the same population as that which used to be called transsexual. But things have changed as queer theory, post-modernism and third wave liberals have stuck their oar in.

The info on this thread is really, really disturbing. Like most others I wasn't aware that the majority of MTF's are the no-surgery "male lesbian" type. Really?!
Talk about male entitlement.

There are a whole bunch of health issues that shouldn't be hushed up in order to protect transpeople's feelings - it isn't helping people to ignore physical risks and complications of taking synthetic sex hormones and having invasive surgery. And IMO it also isn't helping people's mental well being to indulge the fantasy that transwomen are biological females (and vice versa for transmen and biological males).

And this is without even going near the subject of children being diagnosed as trans and given puberty blockers and the failure to openly discuss how people of all age groups are being diagnosed as trans or encouraged to think they are trans when in fact they are gender nonconforming homosexuals or lesbians. This is a very real problem for lesbians in particular because transwomen dominate transpolitics when the issues for lesbians/transmen are very different to those of gay man/transwomen. (This domination alone is highly worthy of discussion...)

It is considered by many liberals to be highly transphobic to even mention this issue - it is one of the subjects that Sheila Jeffreys is concerned about and she is no platformed because she dares consider the issues of non gender conforming lesbians and separates transgenderism into the different concerns of two different sexes.

So the reality is that Trans people still have the female or male bodies they were born into. Any surgery, is cosmetic surgery. If you are a MtoF and go to your GP, the GP will use male averages to check if things like your lung function is good enough.

One of the challengs in Trans healthcare, is getting Trans people to attend check ups for health issues for their sexed bodies. For example, getting FtoM to attend for cervical smears. One of the ways some Trans people deal with that cognitive dissonance, is to say that both both men and women can need cervical smears.

Nobody should be bigoted. So of course verbal harassment and vioence towards MtoF is always wrong.

But neither should we deny biological realities.

It reminds me of a very good article I read during the 80's about HIV. At the time there was a lot of anti gay speech and a lot of that was focussed around HIV. Lots of left wing people were rightly challenging that, but they were also saying that Het people much at risk of HIV as gay men as a group. That simply wasn't true, and thsi article explained how we can reject and argue against homophobic speech, without denying the realities that gay men as a group, are at greater risk of HIV.

Thankyou for the link, Really, I feel that I am learning a lot about this. I don't think I can carry on with it, though, because on reading the bit about "Trans womens bodies are female bodies, whether or not we have penises," I am in danger of muttering the words "political correctness gone mad" which I have never had to utter before in my life and the next step would be to purchas a copy of the Daily Mail and I'd rather shoot myself. To test the waters, to see if I've just become an old fogey, I ran all this past my 17 year old daughter. Her response was that she would embrace the whole male-bodied-person-who-is-a-woman in her locker-room concept as accepatable on the grounds of "Hey, Mum, it's the 21st century, let's go with equality and anti-bigotry" and feels it wouldn't be a safety risk - well, it might, but it would be miniscule so let it go. She would be less OK with expecting a lesbian to have sex with a male-bodied-woman ("that's just getting too confusing"). She would, thankfully, draw the line at male-bodied-women saying that feminists can't discuss female-bodied-women's female bodiedness issues, such as maternity and cervical screening, on the grounds that "no-one tells me what I can or cannot discuss as a feminist" and, interestingly, "men can be feminists too so it doesn't matter whether you call yourself male or female or whether you have children or penises or cervixes or not, you can still join in with feminists and campaign for what they think is important," which sounds like a more common sense approach to me.

basil there aren't any lies or misinformation so kim won't answer you. This is a typical trans activist response. Rather than listen to women's concerns and try to understand them and talk them through, kim simply calls them lies and misinformation with a few insults thrown in. It's because there are no answers other than that they want women to make accommodations of women's rights while at the same time not discussing it because they also want validation of their womanhood and they can't get that if we discuss the difference between transwomen and women. It's also why they insist on calling us cis women.

The changing room problem is a problem of male violence.

Because men are likely to be aggressive and perhaps violent towards male bodied persons who present as female via the accoutrements of femininity.

But that is not women's responsibility. We are being asked to compensate for male violence.

I feel a great deal of sympathy for anyone who suffers due to their lack of gender conformity. And I also feel deep sympathy for anyone who has experienced such trauma at the hands of their own sex that they reject that sex and therefore themselves. I really do.

But the solution is not to reinforce gender and it is very unjust to expect women to shift over a bit in order to compensate for the inhumanity of rigid patriarchal gender rules. Particularly because women are already hugely disadvantaged as a result of strict gender rules that are not of our making. We have few hard won rights and we being asked to compromise them in order to make things more comfortable for men and to maintain a status quo which damages us. Quite a big ask! But of course that's what women are for - making sure the men are ok.

We are being asked to efface our very identity and deny the very thing that allows us to identify and challenge our oppression; what it is to be female and what it means to be a women in male supremacy.

I'm trying to think of this from a trans person's point of view. I do get that you may want to live your life as a woman but not want to have very invasive surgery. But here are my "but how could that possibly work?" points:

1. If you haven't actually got the physical female things like a cervix - then you can't possibly need to have them looked after, can you? You cant screen thin air. Also, if you haven't actually got a vagina, then you can't have lesbian sex, can you? It would be like me trying to have gay sex with a man - it just wouldn't be physically possible, my vagina would get in the way - I couldn't just pretend it wasn't there.

1. The locker room thing. I get that if you are permanently dressing as/acting as a woman then it would look a bit odd if you walked into the male locker-room. BUT - when you get into the female locker room and start undressing, then it's going to be a huge shock for all the women in there. And most women, like me before this thread, would have no knowledge of this sort of thing at all. You'd need a huge public awareness campaign - which would open up debate on the issue - but you would have to accept that a lot of women might come down on the side of, "no thankyou." Or, perhaps, another option could be found. Maybe public debate could make men aware that some trans people would be in their locker rooms so not to be too shocked when they see a woman walking in - just accept that it is a transwoman who has to be in there because of the physical side of things.

1. As for being a woman but not having the physical surgery necessary - I think it has to be really obvious. The man in that video who was claiming that lesbians don't like him had a beard! He is clearly a man and would not look at all out of place in the male locker room, so on the days when he needs to go swimming etc, he could just wear a t-shirt and jeans and he would be fine using the men's.

I do think that there has to be some degree of realizing that this a very unusual thing and that some compromises will have to be made. For example, if you don't have a cervix then it might make you feel very sad to hear other women talking about theirs but it would be silly to say that women can't now discuss cervical health or to pretend that you have a cervix.

And it has a knock-on effect on the clarity and boldness of all feminist thought, IMO, because it forces women to deny their own instincts and check themselves at every turn for some imagined 'cis' (i.e., female) privilege.

Yes to this DonkeySkin. Absolutely.

The whole notion of women having sex based privilege in male supremacist society is laughable and shows a total lack of understanding of what structuralized oppression actually is.

It is just an insulting and narcissistic appropriation of feminist analysis and language. It is purely to shore up delusional gender fetishization and to co-opt women's oppression for the purpose of obfuscating what is perfectly obvious to radical feminists - that the concept of "cis privilege" when applied to women is designed to invisibleize the glaring male entitlement that transpolitics are founded on.

It works though and it wrong foots so many women - especially liberals who are desperate to never be called a bigot, ever, by anyone, including men who are trampling all over women's rights.

So what are the "lies and misinformation" Kim?

Seriously, what has anyone said that is an outright lie or just misinformation?

I honestly am trying to understand what a reasonable trans person (which you generally come across as) would think is a lie or misinformation on this thread. I never engage with transactivists in any internet environment because I simply can't be bothered and I assume they're not particularly representative of most trans people, so I don't really know what counts as "lies" and "misinformation".

What has anyone said that is actually untrue?