Following on from the TERF thread...

As transubstantiation has been mentioned, here is another analogy:

When the C of E started ordaining women, some members of the C of E defected in a very high profile way, and were accepted with open arms by the RC church. (including some married priests - RC priests can't marry)

I was furious. I was teetering on the edge of the RC church, having great difficulty with it and my own principles, anyway, so was not too deeply hurt when I just thought: this is no place for me. This organisation is behaving like a dustbin for misogynists who find themselves out of place where they were before. And all these much vaunted principles about celibate clergy don't matter a jot - they are so dispensable when they are being cast aside to accommodate men's disgust with women priests.

Obviously, I left the church (not formally - I wish there were a ceremony for that). but it was ok - I knew deep down that the misogyny of the RC church conflicted with my spiritual well being and it was just being clarified when it thrust everything aside to accommodate a misogyny that was no longer tolerated elsewhere.

Being a woman should not conflict with my spiritual health as being RC did, but is womanhood now just a grey category for "not men" and must it accommodate everyone?

Kim, lots of issues on here get lots of interest, quite a number of threads go to a thousand posts.

Gender identity and what it means is key to both feminists and trans people. So of course threads which cover gender identity get responses.

And you did ask us how we all defined various things to do with trans issues.

My gut reaction is that if men don't like being men, they should change what being a man means, instead of changing their bodies.

"But feminists do seem to have an unusual interest in trans people and treatment. "

Honestly, until the interweb I didn't think transsexualism/ transgenderism had anything to do whatsoever with feminism. I was outright puzzled that some people seemed so involved with it, for me it had about as much to do with feminism as arguments about transubstantiation. Then I found that there were people out there who call themselves women and feminists, who act and talk just like misogynist men in the presence of actual women who disagree with them and feminists. I've really, really tried to avoid trans issues because I think it ought to be totally marginal to feminism.

And also I've just been so outraged that the vocal trans activists spend all their time stalking feminists, not powerful men. Why aren't they targeting the bastions of power, the army, the police, the media? Why are they targeting feminist events and lesbian spaces? They have made trans a feminist issue, feminists didn't

Heh heh heh @ the surprise about feminists having a lot to say about transpolitics. You haven't really understoof all these threads, have you, Kim?

You remind me of another poster who pops up in these parts sometimes to not see anything beyond her own life.

But feminists do seem to have an unusual interest in trans people and treatment

As Beachcomber said, trans issues came knocking on my door, not the other way around.

kim I bothered to read this: Do you think HRT / surgery is acceptable or should trans people not be allowed that and should have talking therapy to accept the body they are in?

Kim are you serious in saying that you find feminist concern and interest in gender politics (which is the umbrella under which transgenderism falls) surprising?!

Really? I mean really?

I can see how it is inconvenient that feminists pay attention to this hugely gendered and sexist issue. But the claim that it is surprising or somehow perverted or weird for us to pay attention is disingenuous to the extreme.

A little anecdote; the reason I, as a feminist, became interested in transgenderism is twofold. Firstly I have contact with transwomen prostitutes, and I have had to learn about GRS with regards to help I am required to find for them (stuff to do with GRS aftercare and a clash with French medical insurance). My focus in the work I do with prostitutes is prostituted women but there is no way I will neglect prostituted transpeople who are on my watch.

Secondly I have a feminist friend who has been stalked and received death threats because she writes in a trans critical manner.

Transgenderism came knocking on my door, not the other way round.

Trans or not no one person knows what it is like to be another person. I am a woman and I don't know how all women think and what choices they want to make for their own bodies, I have a disability and I don't know what all people with this disability feel and what choices they want to make for their own bodies. We each have or should strive to have fully autonomy over our own bodies.

This thread has drifted onto surgery but that wasn't what it started as. A person's decision to have medical treatments generally speaking only impacts themselves and is not really anyone else's business. The acceptance of a male bodied person as female and entitled to access all female only spaces impacts a large number of people which is why it is something that should be available for discussion among those impacted.

Kim, you were the person who made this thread about surgery etc and asked others to talk about it.

The thread was about the impact trans people would have on gender, not about trans people themselves.

And I find no logic to the attempt to paint feminist analysis of transgenderism as akin to homophobes who think homosexuals and lesbians need "fixed".

If anything I find pro trans people as being in the camp of thinking (perhaps inadvertently in their desire for validation) that the non heterosexual non gender compliant amongst us need "fixed" with synthetic sex hormones and mutilating cosmetic genital surgery.

This always happens. kim you invited other people, repeatedly, to say what they thought trans was and what trans people should do. Several people, including SmallPress and CailinDana gave very personal (and moving) accounts of their feelings and your response is to state baldly that feminists should stick out of what's best for trans people. The idea that feminists are trying to dictate anything about surgery for trans people is absurd. I'd love to know where all this feminist power resides.

The comparison with "gay therapy" is also absurd. Gay people do not have to take potentially dangerous medication or remove healthy organs to be gay. The similarity with "gay therapy" is that it is society's attitude to gender non-conforming people that needs to change, not the people themselves.

Feminists question cosmetic surgery for women to conform to patriarchal beauty standards, they question the use of hormonal birth control and its effects on women, they question how the medical establishment in general treats women. Feminists can question genital surgery for trans people, and particularly whether and to what extent that makes a difference in the accommodations made for transwomen.

It is entirely irrelevant whether feminists should have any influence over any individual trans person's access or not to surgery because feminists are not the ones who decide. Again it is a moot point. Doctors and medical ethicists are the ones who decide.

Personally my feminist viewpoint is that I am concerned about women. I am concerned about women having surgery due to lesbophobic and misogynistic societal norms, institutions, hegemony, stereotypes, etc. I care about women being punished for not complying with heteronormativity and not "knowing their place" in the gender hierarchy. I care about women's bodies being mutilated by misogynistic society, whatever the reason - because their breasts aren't porny enough/because they are to be hobbled by shoes or clothing/because they aren't allowed to duck femininity and love other women.

I am less concerned about men who choose to mutilate their bodies as men are not the focus of feminism and men must speak for themselves. I care in a general human rights way and in a humane way as outlined above but not to the extent that I would do anything much about it.

I think there are a lot of feminists who feel similar - we disagree in principal with genital cosmetic and mutilating surgery for both sexes, but women are our focus.

So I wouldn't worry Kim, no feminist will stand in the way of your surgery; in part because no one gives a shit what we think and in part because our focus is women.

For me it comes down to not denying any woman the things they need to get by in a patriarchal society:

transwomen - should have suitable medical assistance and be treated politely addressed in the way they prefer

women born female - should have full reproductive autonomy, and physical integrity, and the exclusive social and physical space they need to feel safe and free

Oh come on. Feminists do not stand around outside clinics with placards, like anti-abortionists.

A more similar analogy would be someone gently regretting that patriarchal punishment of single mothers had led, over the years, in many cases, to abortions and adoptions that the mothers found damaging, and regretted. It isn't like harrassing individuals in abortion clinics.

In fact the more I think of it, the more I see the rush towards hormonal and surgical alterations, at the moment, the emphasis on all this style of "treatment" (not that it ever happens at all - but the zeal and enthusiasm right now) as being analogously heavy handed as almost-forced consent to abortions, hormonal contraception and even sterilisation in the 60s - as a misogynist "cure" for the inconvenient truth that women will conceive from PIV sex - and wouldn't it be more convenient to patriarchy if women were fuckable without fertility?

It's a misguidedly orthogonal thinking. Making the indvidual, and reality, the problem, rather than our society.

I am also reminded - having just read "health at every size" - of all the tinkering with people and their diets that is supposed to make everyone a perfect size and shape. Diet tinkering has led to disaster, as a society. Now we are on surgery. The long term outcomes of bariatric surgery are poorer than we are led to believe, and a lot of this is hushed up because the victim is ashamed. "I should have been fixed. What is wrong with me?" and they don't share their misery.

The use of "fixing" is gone into brilliantly by Mary Daly, I now remember.

Many feminists want to widen the treatment options for trans people, precisely because these feminists are very well aware that various methods in the surgical, psychiatric and pharmaceutical fields do not always focus on the best interests of patients.

If the current treatment options for trans people can be questioned but no better options are found following that analysis, including feminist analysis, then so be it. But current medical practices for trans people MUST be questioned! (Likewise for current medical practices for every other aspect of the human condition).

Meanwhile, it seems that many transactivists seem determined to cast current treatment options in stone, want to make criticism or even discussion taboo, and refuse to accept the possibilty that future alternative treatments could be better for trans people than the currently available options. With patriarchal "friends" like that, which trans person needs enemies?

Kim, you asked what people's opinions were, on a feminist thread. That is why people gave opinions, not because they are all trying to dictate to you what to do.

OP, sorry I know I have added numerous links, but this is Daphna Joel explaining from a biological perspective, explaining why 3G sex exists (genes, gonads, genitals) and can define males and females, while male and female brain sex and gender identity is not real and should not matter. She then concludes that gender should be abolished in the way believing left handed people are mentally different has been abolished.

It presents a very clear argument about the biology of it, if you feel like sitting through the science.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=kKeKCxPApKQ