Following on from the TERF thread...

That's interesting. I have to stay out of these discussions as I'm pretty ignorant and it would take too long to defend my opinions (which I do have) when challenged to do so.

Very anecdotally, then - I was for several years closely involved with a 'class' of transgendered and intersex women (all with medical transformations.) They are not British and the environment was very showbiz - so representative only of themselves, really. Very few said they'd had the 'wrong body' experience growing up. In general, they reported a range of interests and sexualities which were incompatible with their male sex in a machista society; they self-identify as gay. In moving towards an altered gender, and the overt self-expression this group is expected to display, they found (in the main) a way of being themselves ... at great cost, often financially & medically, and always socially.

I don't know whether it's unusual that this group's non-showbiz friends seemed to feature a high proportion of feminist-y women. Perhaps there is a bond in being aware of performing femininity? Dunno. But I think it is sad that the majority of those people would've been happy enough with a life in drag, choosing transformation mainly in order to 'fit' an existing cultural label.

As I said, I've not done any form of academic study with this group and would be unqualified to do so. I'm just wondering whether they are an example of the "desexing" mentioned above.

Paris Lees said what? Is there a link? I want to be fully aware of what she said so I can be on safe ground in calling it absolute rubbish.

I'm de-lurking because this is the issue that has revitalised my radical feminism.

Growing up I had a very 'live and let live' attitude to transgenderism, or transsexualism as it was then known. I believed it was harmless, none of anyone's business and opposed by repressed, small-minded people. Transgenderism was either far less visible or far less common back then and it was only upon leaving university that I really got to know someone who was M2T and had my moment of epiphany. He was basically a gay man who had grown-up in a horrifically homophobic family (his brothers were gay-bashers) and had obviously internalised at a young age that it was better to be straight and safe than gay and victimised. His idea of what constituted living as a woman was a sexist man's idea of womanhood and, although a generally kind and considerate person, he still retained his male socialisation, particularly when dealing with women. I realised that no-one could become a woman because they 'felt like a woman' and, indeed, that women's experiences were so hard-earned the very idea of appropriating them was insulting and damaging. However, although the sexism of transgenderism irked me, I still saw it as an issue that affected a minority of gay men, who were coping with their homosexuality in the best way they could and who had very little interest in impacting the lives of born women.

Cut forward a few years and I read that a man dressed as a woman to spy on women in some toilets that I sometimes used. As I personally know four different women who have been sexually assaulted in public toilets (two as children and two as teenagers) this disturbed me. Researching the issue online I found out that men dressing as women to access women's toilets and changing rooms for predatory purposes is far more common than I had imagined but the concerns women have about transgender access rights are routinely written off as pearl-clutching bigotry and nothing to do with material reality. I was also unnerved about the number of violent, predatory men claiming trangenderism to access women's prisons and the way this was being championed as progress. All the evidence shows that sexual predators target vulnerable women and girls in institutions and yet we're meant to be cheerleaders for this? And then came the Julie Burchill furore ... In the aftermath Roz Kaveney wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian and I made a few rational comments below the line (along the lines of critiquing gender is a fundamental tenet of feminism and transactivists aligning with MRA groups is disturbing) and, firstly, I was attacked with a level of vitriol shocking for even CIF and then all my comments were deleted, along with all other transcritical comments. This was my first experience of the sinister, Orwellian nature of transactivism and I began educating myself on the subject.

Being a radical feminist at the moment feels like being in one of those sci-fi movies where aliens colonise the earth, invading people's bodies, and you are one of the only people who can see what's happening. I still think there are homosexual M2Ts out there who just want a quiet life, but feminism has been taken over by MRAs, sexual fetishists and sexual predators, who want to silence women, claim to speak for us and enter our spaces for predatory reasons. When I hear someone like Paris Lees claiming women enjoy strangers groping them on the bus I get livid, knowing that my nieces are going to face this at some point in their lives and they will find it humiliating and threatening as I did. When I talk to other women about transactivists they still have the traditional idea of gay men with full SRS and are surprised to find out this is not the case. Interestingly when I talk to men they are far less receptive to the idea that someone can change sex and are dead against M2Ts accessing women's toilets or playing for women's sports teams etc. 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.

On the advice about posting from MNHQ, I think they have recognised that posters here are trying to have a thoughtful discussion about a very difficult and complex topic, as opposed to just aiming to ruffle feathers as the MRA posts tend to do, so they are trying to give advice which allows that to continue while avoiding offence wherever possible. I think that's admirable of them. I also think the discussion has repeatedly referenced the fact that it doesn't aim to denigrate trans people, but rather a particular strand of trans activism.

Thanks for the link. Whenever I try to find information on long-term effects of hormone treatment /puberty blockers for GID, she's the only source I come across.

This is such a fascinating thread. Love a bit of FWR lurking.

All this stuff about puberty blockers and diagnosing children as trans is chilling.

I'd like to believe, however, that if it came down to penises in changing rooms, gender-neutral language around women's issues, 'trans' children etc, that most of British society would call bullshit on the whole thing. Most people are not right -on and will not ignore biology.

SuperLoud, you might be interested in this analysis by a lesbian blogger of parents who 'trans' their kids.

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.

dirtywhiteboi67.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/transgender-kids-new-frontier-in-child.html

Stromba, I don't know of any studies yet that have followed up on outcomes for children treated with puberty blockers. But it would make sense if all of them ended up transitioning. If you've been told you really are the opposite sex for so long, and everyone around you including your parents, doctors and teachers is so invested in reinforcing your trans identity, it would take a tremendous amount of self-knowledge and perspective to call a halt to the whole thing - and who among us had that when we were teenagers?

I've been reading this with interest and thinking back to the 70s when some adult women were political lesbians, I wonder if I was a "political" gender-non-conforming child. I dressed and acted (and passed) as a boy successfully for a couple of years when I was 8 or 9, not because I thought I was a boy, but because boys seemed to have the monopoly on the interesting stuff (cricket instead of rounders, football instead of netball, climbing trees, etc). I wanted to be George from the Famous Five. (In effect I saw that George was more interesting than Anne, but lacked the intellectual maturity to ask why Enid Blyton makes her more typical girl characters so bloody wet, rather than taking them at face value and assuming "girly" stuff was wet).

Interestingly, it left me with great sympathy for individual trans people, because I think I certainly conceptualised the experience as there being three things at play - sex (my genitals), gender (how society expected girls or boys to behave) and a third, amorphous thing in my head. In my case, it told me "you may want to pretend to be a boy because they get the cool stuff and you don't, but you don't want to be a boy." So to me it's always made sense that someone else might have that internal voice but telling them "and furthermore, you are or were meant to be a boy." So far, so liberal.

But I've really been rethinking this, due to a combination of this thread and its predecessor (especially the stuff on the cotton ceiling), plus the fact that I (like many women) have been radicalised by motherhood and come to a recognition that biology is the material reality against which misogyny and patriarchal power structures are acted out, and no amount of liberal, "Rawlesian initial position" thought experiments are going to make that material reality go away. 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? It makes my blood run cold.

Agreed, the pathologising of lesbianism is terrifying.

I'm surprised a few more liberals haven't woken up to that yet. I guess they are too busy fawning over male to trans people for being on the telly bullying women about not dressing sexay enough and writing misogynistic punk records.

I've sure I've seen a statistic somewhere claiming that, 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. I'm trying to find a source for that but it's difficult since 90% of the results for it in google are pro-medicalisation of gender non-conforming children.

My mum would have fought a diagnosis of GID just like she fought my diagnosis of deafness, but I know some parents would be only too glad to have a good wee boy instead of a tiny baby dyke.
It's uncomfy for people to see children who appear extremely likely to grow up to be homosexual because we tend to identify it wholly with sexual behaviour, which is in the adult realm or whatever. There has to be a better way of acknowledging those traits than to assign someone the opposite 'gender' and pathologise them.

Also, as a lesbian, I feel that pressure on children to 'transgender' will result in subfertility for young girls who would otherwise grow up to be lesbian - it's eugenics, essentially.

This is a very important point. Since sex-role non-conformity in childhood is a strong predictor of homosexuality, the pathologising of such children and the subsequent 'treatment' of them with drugs that stunt their bone and brain development and render them infertile should be a major concern for gay men and lesbians alike.

Green’s prospective study of gender-variant boys (1987) followed into adolescence and young adulthood found that 75% of those who could be reassessed had developed a gay or bisexual orientation, and only one was primarily transsexual. Subsequent studies of girls and boys have continued to find that the majority of gender-variant children grow up to have a homosexual or bisexual orientation rather than identify as transsexual (Drummond et al., 2008; Wallien & Cohen-Kettenis, 2008).

Gender Variance: An Ongoing Challenge to Medico-Psychiatric Nosology by Rosario, Vernon A. (2011) Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health, 15: 1, 1-7.

Lots of women who have anything critical to say about transgenderism are compared to men- I see it pretty often.

It's maybe the same sort of mind-set that encourages little girls who play with cars and want short hair to think they're actually boys.

Oops, examples please

Where is anyone being denigrating? Exam

That's an odd post GoshAnne.

Look, I thought it was very decent of MNHQ to not just zap a longish genuine post, that obviously had a bit of thought put into it, for the sake of a few lines in the post (none of which contained a personal attack or offensive language/slurs/etc). I have been on MN for about 8 years now, I'm not a troll and I post a fair bit on Women's Issues - I don't think your comparison with 'some of the male posters we get in FWR' (by which I imagine you mean MRA trolls) is valid. Having said that, AFAIA lots of posters (male or otherwise) are told by MNHQ to adapt their posting style/why they have been deleted. I'm not the first and won't be the last.

I really appreciated how Rowan dealt with this and I wanted to say so. My aim was not to leave Rowan, or HQ in general, open to criticism about how they deal with individual posters or accusations of being 'complicit' in 'denigrating a section of society'. I think I also wanted to show appreciation that HQ understand that the issues discussed on this thread are extremely controversial, but that they do not wish to shut down (genuine) discussion of an important subject just because we don't all agree.

You are allowed to post your opinion that this thread is about 'denigrating a section of society'. I am allowed to post in a critical manner of the practices and sex politics of transgenderism.

There are fewer and fewer (non private blog type) spaces where women are allowed to speak openly about the ramifications of transgenderism for our sex. I'm pretty proud of MN for being one of them.

Gag, your post was one of the most amusing 'whataboutthemenz' I have seen.

'Having read the other links from Ditum and Glosswitch and having mulled things over a bit it has occurred to me that transgenderism has the potential to enter the realms of sex selection via gender . And what does this have the potential to mean in countries such as China and India where female fetuses are aborted and girl babies killed at birth? Girls and boys, men and women are not awarded the same status in male supremacist society - which is the reason why sex selection is illegal/unethical in many countries, because otherwise girls just won't be born/allowed to live in equivalent numbers to boys. And that is genocide.'

Also, as a lesbian, I feel that pressure on children to 'transgender' will result in subfertility for young girls who would otherwise grow up to be lesbian - it's eugenics, essentially.

Um... I'm not sure that's what this thread is, but ::shrug::

Women are affected by legislation on behalf of transwomen. We are affected when transwomen want to come to groups intended for women. Why can't women talk about this? Why do we always have to put males first?

MNHQ are giving you personal advice on how to present your views now?

I'm sure you'd be thrilled at them doing this to some of the male posters we get in FWR. Why not, if "discussion is so important"?

I think it's bad enough a thread denigrating a section of society is allowed to stand, but MNHQ being complicit in it is worse.

Okay so I'll have a go at re-posting following Rowan's advice as to which parts got me deleted. I haven't run this by HQ so it may get zapped too. For the record HQ deleted the post because it was reported so it is possible this will go too if it is reported again and I haven't edited enough controversial stuff out.

AbortionFairyGodmother, thanks for your piece on 'cis' it is really good and clearly demonstrates it to be a term which benefits men to the disadvantage of women i.e. as patriarchal. (One small thing, I'm uncomfortable with transwomen being analogized as the 'blacks' of gender, don't mean to be critical however and it is impossible really to find the perfect analogy...)

Having read the other links from Ditum and Glosswitch and having mulled things over a bit it has occurred to me that transgenderism has the potential to enter the realms of sex selection via gender . And what does this have the potential to mean in countries such as China and India where female fetuses are aborted and girl babies killed at birth? Girls and boys, men and women are not awarded the same status in male supremacist society - which is the reason why sex selection is illegal/unethical in many countries, because otherwise girls just won't be born/allowed to live in equivalent numbers to boys. And that is genocide.

Genocide is the systematic destruction of all or part of a racial, ethnic, religious or national group via the (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; or (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (Wikipedia)

The whole Laurie Penny "awesome! picture of an XY person who takes synthetic female hormones and has silicone implants on Time magazine" article, is vacuous beyond belief. And notice how all the examples of "a great many transsexual celebrities, actors and activists have exploded into the public sphere" that Penny cites are transwomen i.e. XY. (Whodathunkit, XY persons in the public eye being talked about as though they are representative of both the male and female experience?!) I wonder if Penny can even think of a couple of successful and famous transmen who have "exploded into the public sphere".

As for the notion of transgenderism as "the next civil rights frontier". Why, why, why, is there no mention of the fact that transgenderism is dependent on synthetic hormones and cosmetic surgery? I know it isn't considered polite to mention this in liberal circles but the inconvenient truth is that transgenderism is dependent on drugs and surgery. It is also expensive. And potentially dangerous.

Which is one of the (many) reasons why I find it so utterly offensive when parallels are drawn with lesbianism and homosexuality. Gay people do not have to take drugs in order to maintain their sexual orientation, they do not need to modify their bodies and sex hormones via medical means. They do not need to have cosmetic surgery. They just are.

There's a woman who sometimes posts on trans critical blogs who talks of her sister - an ageing MtT person who cannot take hormones anymore due to damage done to their heart by these hormones. This person cannot take the synthetic hormones anymore and therefore is having to 'detransition'. In other words, they are going back to what they have always been; male. Except they are in a horrible limbo of ill health, gender dysphoria, a castrated body with silicone breast implants, a deepening voice and returning facial hair. And no-one really wants to help/knows how to help. I have also heard of older transwomen developing blood clots and having to stop synthetic hormones ending up in the same position.

Okay, we'll see, I hope I tweaked it enough. There's a whole bunch of stuff I want to say about the transwomen Penny cites who have 'exploded into the public sphere'. Will do it in another post though.

I just checked my emails and I have a nice message from Rowan helpfully telling me which bits got my above post deleted and saying it is fine to repost if I leave those bits out. Rowan was also good enough to include a copy of the post itself so that I can edit it and she also said that it is fine to tell you lot all this and she included other generally good egg stuff about the importance of discussion of controversial issues. Thank you Rowan I really appreciate you taking the time to do that I shall reply to your email but wanted to say thanks here too.

I think it was probably more than one phrase! I might try to water it down, might not be much left though. I didn't think it was any more controversial than the thread in general but I guess it depends where the Overton Window lies in non radical feminist circles on this issue. I don't want MN to have trouble over these sorts of threads or we won't be able to have them anymore...

Also big thanks to DonkeySkin for the link to the Nussbaum article on Butler/Gender Trouble. Hadn't read it before - says exactly what I think. Although I have only fallen asleep to read Gender Trouble, it put me off wading through any other books by Butler. It's weird how you often see her described as a radical feminist when she isn't really at all. She seems to be enamored with gender, certainly she has made a living pontificating about it (whilst never critiquing it as an oppressive hierarchy). She just sucks the politics out of gender and the radicalism out of radical feminist ideas. Indeed she sucks the feminism out of them too. And disappears the gendered nature of gender... (Can you tell I didn't like the book? ).

I remember the post now and I have no idea what the problem was. They deleted another couple of posts - anyone know what they were?

I don't think so if you remove the offending phrase, beach.