Following on from the TERF thread...

It doesn't surprise me there is an attempt to shut this thread down. The whole MRA argument is that women are the oppressors and they are the victims. It's silencing and Orwellian to claim that women analysing their own oppression are somehow causing violence to others. The day I picket a memorial event for victims of violence (as transactivists did at the memorial for victims of Marc Lépine) is the day I accept I am a bigot.

Thanks, Gurlwithacurl.

People who don't think gender theory should be debated are obviously going to complain about this thread. We know there are people on here who think that, so it's no surprise. If they think there are attacks on transgender people, though, they should report the attacking posts, rather than starting threads-about-threads.

Have been lurking on this thread as it is so interesting and very pertinent to a situation in my family. I am very nervous of posting about it for several reasons.

Anyway, thought I should also warn you that there is a complaint about the thread on Site Stuff.

Adult women under 30 often find it hard to get sterilised because we might change our minds but it's fine to sterilise a sex role non-conforming child at 16 with hormones and 18 with surgery. Not to mention Lupron at 11 which is a massively powerful drug meant for girls who are menstruating at 6 and adults with severe endometriosis and prostate cancer.

That's before we even get into the likes of Norman Spack who happily gave a 13 year old born male oestrogen at the age of 13 and full SRS at the age of 16. That practice has been criminalised now but it's shocking that it was ever allowed to happen.

Especially when you consider how gendered kid's lives are nowadays.

Toys, clothes, what they supposed to be like, how they are supposed to behave and look...

I know its always been like that to some extent but it is particularly bad for kids nowadays.

Beach, she lists 'the hyper-liberal politically correct' parent/s as the first type of parent susceptible to diagnosing their child as trans, followed by 'the classic homophobe' parent/s and the parent/s suffering from Munchausen by Proxy.

Why doesn't that surprise me DonkeySkin

There's something wrong with a world where we'd rather sterilise minors than accept that some boys like dresses and some girls like tonka trucks.

YY ^ this.

I think it was Germaine Greer who said if the shoe doesn't fit, change the shoe, don't change the foot.

The Ruby link really upsets me. She probably just wants to be a boy because she doesn't like dresses and thinks boys toys and games are more fun. Who can blame her? Boys toys are way more fun than dolls and tea sets. As a kid I liked putting on nice dresses for family get togethers and stuff but if I'd been made to wear them all the time I'd have kicked up a fuss too (I live in dresses now because I find them more comfortable and don't do as much running about as I did when I was a kid). I also would have had a hissy fit if I wasn't allowed to play with my transformers and had to play with Barbie dolls.

The natural reaction to children being told that you can't do something because it's only for boys/girls is to say "OK, I'm a boy/girl then". That's the sort of logic that young kids have. I've been told I can't play with the toy I want to play with because I'm a boy/girl - therefore if I was a girl/boy I would be able to play with that toy - I'll tell people that I am a girl/boy and I will be able to play with the toy.

If their parents then make a big deal of it and immediately go out and change their name and buy them a whole new wardrobe then that child will be indoctrinated into thinking that they are actually a girl/boy trapped in the body of a boy/girl when actually they just wanted to play with a toy they liked. There's something wrong with a world where we'd rather sterilise minors than accept that some boys like dresses and some girls like tonka trucks.

www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415539401/ Gender Hurts - read it online until the end of the month

I think it's good to think about the word "gender" as many people (me too, sometimes) use it as a "polite" word for "sex"

Is anyone surprised that R Kelly's 13-year-old female child is rejecting her femaleness? Given that R Kelly is notorious for raping girls that age.
I think it's easy to empathise with those people who wish to reject their gender role - I just don't agree with trans ideology.

The original use of 'gender' was to describe men and women's respective roles/characteristics within patriarchy, to criticise the social construction of gender, rather than to reify it.
[Q]] Ann Oakley on this here - it's a pretty good talk and she was one of the women advocating the use of the word gender originally.

Oh, right! Thanks, Almond.

Lol @ rabies & cholera as sex-role examples

I didn't want to be a woman because, in my world, it meant being battered. Boy/girl roles were much less pronounced and I had brothers; perhaps today I'd have "wanted to be a boy" in a more stereotypical manner. I delayed my own puberty by having anorexia. It's frightening to think that, not only might other adults have suggested radical intervention, but my father might well have seized on it as a handle for further abuse with interesting opportunities ...

Not exactly a majority issue, but still an example of why a child might seem to be rejecting their gender identity.

Garlic, we may be talking at cross purposes. I am saying that the 'old' feminist view of gender should be called sex roles so that we can accurately name the problem and separate it entirely from the queer theory concept of gender. I am not suggesting sex roles are a good thing, just that we should have a clear word and definition for them, like we do for rabies or cholera.

QueenStromba wrote - "while ~80% of children not treated with puberty blockers decide they are not transexual, almost 100% of children treated with puberty blockers go on to transition."

Puberty blockers are touted as helpful in buying time for a child to decide if they want to move to the next stage of transition. I know that puberty blockers could be very helpful to a child who is absolutely certain that they want to transition, but what about the children who are not so sure?

Many transactivists and doctors insist that giving puberty blockers to children is a wonderful, medically safe, scientifically unbiased way to delay the onset of puberty, and to not do so is tantamount to child abuse. This practice is sold to society as an effective way to help make the person's transition easier and more convincing. Puberty blockers, however, do introduce bias into the transition process. Children who are already gender non-conforming are given these drugs, which can have the effect of making them even more at odds with their original gender. Yet the children are then expected to make an apparently unbiased decision about staying with or leaving their original gender. Suppressing puberty may help eventual transition but it may also hinder the choice to not transition. I think puberty blockers contribute to making it too difficult for some gender non-conforming children to avoid a seemingly inevitable transition.

I think there is a considerable risk that puberty blockers can skew a child's development towards an inevitable full transition, even when the child's thoughts and feeling remain uncertain. If a child does actually stop puberty blockers and stay with their original gender, their late puberty will become yet another source of trauma for these children.

I don't know of any solution that could help all gender non-conforming children. I do know that puberty blockers may be an answer for some children but they are not the answer for all children.

Current medical practices for trans people must be questioned (as must all other medical procedures for all non-trans medical conditions, because questioning the current situation is what enables society to deliver better care). 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.

I've just read Donkey's link about the child Ruby The only reported behaviour I found OTT was about playing her face when told to sleep in the girls' tent. But she's a child - she may just have been cross about having her self-construct challenged, in exactly the same way as a Fox refusing to sleep with Squirrels (or any number of other things that matter to a child.) All the rest is about her sensibly observing that boys get to run around more than girls, and choosing not to be forced into girlishness - as you did, Lurcio.

If the feminist definition of gender went back to being called sex role, would that then permit kids - and adults - to play around with them? If people are still going to be forced into one role or another, that doesn't help much, does it

I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the 70s from a feminist standpoint!

This is a bit OT now but I just wanted to respond to two important comments upthread.

I think it would be far simpler if the feminist definition of gender went back to being called sex role

almond, I agree completely. I'm reading Gender Hurts by Sheila Jeffreys right now and she says the same thing. 'Sex role' is so much clearer and points directly to the harm. Most people basically think gender and sex are interchangeable (or, at least, they don't have a clear understanding of the differences between them). It makes it very difficult to discuss these issues with any clarity when everyone is reading a different meaning into 'gender'.

And it allows trans activists to get away with the sophistry they currently employ WRT to what exactly 'gender identity' means. They say it isn't necessarily about dysphoria with one's sexed body (the old definition of transsexualism), but they also deny it is about sex-role stereotypes. I've asked a few online, well, WHAT is it, then? And they can never answer with anything except a circular definition ('gender identity is about one's deeply held sense of gender').

Beach, I'm also grateful to Mumsnet for allowing women to discuss the ramifications of trans politics, when so many 'feminist' spaces impose total censorship around this issue.

Laurie Penny gets abuse from trans activists?

In a way I feel sorry for Laurie Penny. She has set herself up as the antithesis to all those mean nasty radfems, throwing countless women under the bus in the process, yet no matter what she writes, she still gets some pretty vile abuse from some trans activists on twitter. Yet she still writes as if there are radfems lurking around every corner waiting to drop copies of The Female Eunuch on her head.

I, and my then boyfriend, walked out of Bound after 15 minutes because it was so cringeworthy. I'm glad to hear it didn't get any better.

Don't forget Bradley Manning punched a female army officer and threatened his mother (or maybe step-mother?) with a knife. A great candidate for sharing a cell with a woman.

In brief here are some of the things about all the "great many transsexual celebrities, actors and activists have exploded into the public sphere" that Laurie Penny waxes lyrical on.

Janet Mock - refers to women as 'fish' and wanted to call her book 'Fish Food' before deciding on the orwellian 'Redefining Realness'. 'Fish' is a misogynistic reference to women's genitals and and the fact that according to some gay men and transwomen, our vulvas and vaginas stink of fish. Despite numerous requests from women's groups to stop referring to women as 'fish', Mock continues to do so. Mock is also pro puberty blockers for minors and describes sex industry grooming of transsexual minors as 'sisterhood'.

Laura Jane Grace - writes misogynistic punk records with references to "bitches" "pussy" "filling pussy with cum" and "faggots". He is on record as saying that he will always be a 'dad' to his daughter (but the rest of us are expected to refer to him as a woman). He was arrested for battery when still living as Tom Gable.

Fallon Fox - snuck into the WMMA without telling the truth that he was transgender and had lived as a man until his early 30s.

Lana Wachowski - BDSMer and fetishist. Won Oscars for The Matrix as Larry Wachowski of the "Wachowski Brothers" (not as Lana). Him and his brother also made 'Bound' a violent film with sexay lesbains in it.

Chelsea Manning - AKA Bradley Manning. Controversial figure who dumped thousands of files of classified information about the US army on wikileaks. Some say hero some say traitor. Certainly Manning is unstable. Manning was Bradley not Chelsea when he dumped the files.

Laverne Cox - famous for bullying women into dressing sexy, walking sexy, buying sexy underwear, etc on reality show TRANSform. Also known for playing a stereotype of a transwoman in a TV show criticized for racist stereotypes. (On the show in one famous episode Cox's character explains to the wimmenz what the various parts of their genitals are cos they don't know that they don't pee out of their vaginas). She even shows them a picture. (See top)

And what about the menz Laurie Penny? Where are the celebrity transmen in your list?

So I'm left wondering what would have happened to a child like me if I was born now - would the school be calling my parents in to have chats about my gender identity and the possibility of puberty blockers?

Very possibly, Lurcio. I read in a Melbourne paper that exactly this happened to a girl who refused to wear dresses and liked 'rough-and-tumble' games and playing with toy trucks. The principal actually called her parents to suggest their daughter might be trans. She was only six

When Ruby was six, her principal called me and said he believed Ruby's boyishness was more than just her being a tomboy. He suggested I research gender-identity issues and gender dysphoria.

www.dailylife.com.au/life-and-love/parenting-and-families/my-eightyearold-daughter-just-wants-to-be-a-boy-20140308-34eth.html

I have noticed, however, that when online debates are framed as 'transactivists vs feminists' men tend to side with transactivism because it is the best stick ever with which to beat us. One can only hope that transactivists carry on with the craziness and force more women to get back in touch with their radicalism, but, so far, I don't hold out much hope for this. It's far easier to be Laurie Penny than it is to be Julie Bindel in this world.

Agree with all of this, sadly, Swerf. Especially the bit about it giving men a stick to beat feminists with. I have noticed liberal-left men particularly enjoy having an excuse to call feminists hateful bigots who should be silenced.

In fact the only men calling bullshit on the trans agenda that I've seen have been right-wing libertarian men like Brendan O'Neill of Spiked. IMO, this is because right-wing men don't need to pretend to be feminists - they have plenty of other 'sticks' with which to beat us and can say whatever anti-feminist shit they like without being ostracised by the right. But for left-wing men, who often have to grit their teeth while women talk about rape and sexism, this is a real gift. Imagine: women are bigots for saying gender is an oppressive social construct! Women are bigots for pointing to men as the instigators and beneficiaries of gender! Women are bigots when they talk about the sex-based origins of women's oppression! Women are bigots for organising politically without males!

And here is a great refutation by Meghan Murphy -

feministcurrent.com/8692/of-course-some-women-are-flattered-by-cat-calls-but-that-doesnt-make-street-harassment-ok-a-response-to-paris-lees/

I'm finding it hard to find the exact Paris Lees quotation, but here is an infuriating article to be getting on with -

www.vice.com/en_uk/read/enjoying-catcalls-paris-lees-column