"What makes a women" NY Times article

How do you know that has never ever happened...? Strange thing to say really.
Some links from another thread here: [Snip]

Only one of these links has a transgender person attacking another person in a 'womans space' and from the description in the article she was defending herself after the toilet door was kicked in, if a woman kicked the toilet door in while you were peeing would you not? (and no i'm not agreeing with her actions before you try and twist it to vilify me)

When you, as someone who is not a biological woman, try to force biological women to share their safe spaces with you because you have chosen to ignore their definition of "woman" in terms of how they self-identify (ie a biological one) you are completely invalidating their identity.

Don't you see how ridiculous your argument about identity is?? No one wins this fight.

I'm not sure I understand your argument here, In what way is my presence in that space invalidating someone else who is there's identity? I am not forcing them to leave or in any way change who they are to accommodate me.

Also how do you identify 'Biological woman', I have breasts, the same muscle structure as any other woman, I have a slightly bigger shoulder frame, but small than my mothers. Unless you want to crawl down my pants and find a flaccid bit of meat waiting to be removed, you could not tell that I am transgender from looking at me.

When you say that a trans woman doesnt belong in womans space because she was forced to live as someone they were not, you are completely invalidating her identity.

When you, as someone who is not a biological woman, try to force biological women to share their safe spaces with you because you have chosen to ignore their definition of "woman" in terms of how they self-identify (ie a biological one) you are completely invalidating their identity.

Don't you see how ridiculous your argument about identity is?? No one wins this fight.

^For some facts for you, since the beginning of records there are ZERO incidents of trans women having attacked / perved / invaded women in a womans safe space.

Ever.

That is a verifiable fact, you can feel free to look it up.^

How do you know that has never ever happened...? Strange thing to say really.
Some links from another thread here:

allisonslaw.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/6-3-280-lb-transwoman-and-martial-expert-punches-woman-when-she-questions-his-presence-in-the-womens-bathroom-woman-loses-5-teeth-and-accrues-60000-in-medical-expenses/
kron4.com/2014/03/03/man-dressed-in-barbie-costume-accused-of-rape-attempt-in-store-bathroom/
www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/pre-op-transsexual-killer-moved-out-2929284
www.huffingtonpost.com/courtney-odonnell/paula-witherspoon-transgender-sex-offender_b_1521938.html
www.theguardian.com/society/2009/sep/04/transexual-prisoner-moved-womens-prison
allisonslaw.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/sex-offender-identifies-as-a-woman-becomes-a-girl-scout-leader-and-sexually-assault-young-girls/

Well one will have doctors documentation, ID and such, one will not.

Trans people are advised from your first therapists appointment to carry your therapists / Doctors letter with you at all times. I 'pass' 100%, but I still carry it with me just in case.

Can you provide details on those cases for me, ive looked but never been able to find any?

"since the beginning of records there are ZERO incidents of trans women having attacked / perved / invaded women in a womans safe space.

Ever.

That is a verifiable fact, you can feel free to look it up."

That's just not true. There have been incidents and trans-activists have declared that the perpetrators who have indulged in this behaviour, were never really transwomen at all, they were just pretending.

But how is one to know which is Schroedinger's trans-pretender and which is a real transwoman?

Right, this thread was linked on Reddit, and I've come over and read through this very carefully and would like to say something from the other side of the table.

I am a 26 year old MtF Transgender person, and whilst I must agree on the general opinon on this the article in question, I cannot agree with a lot of the comments seen here.

I find it very disheartening that a group of people who pride themselves on being very strongly for the cause of equality, would base their opinions of another group purely on the a sensationalist blog, describing the transition of one prominent figure.

The majority of trans people cannot afford tens of thousands of pounds on cosmetic surgery to look like Caitlyn stereotypical look, or be as lucky as Laverne Cox in our natural looks, that article does not accurately describe 99.9% of transgender people in our world, we just want to live out our lives in bodys that match who we are, we want to be acknowledged as who we are, not what we were unlucky enough to be born as.

I cannot begin to describe to someone who has not experienced it how crippling Gender Dysphoria is, or how it feels to undergo the transexual process. To then be segmented because we're not woman enough for you is the ultimate insult (luckily 95% of the time you would have no idea it was a trans person in the first place) how can you claim to want equality but then judge and segment a group based on a biological error baffles me.

The argument that we have with people who are Trans Exclusionary is when that they claim we are just men who want to invade 'womans space', or when they claim that we're just not 'Woman Enough' to be included. The usual arguemnts is 'you've not been woman long enough' or that we somehow enjoyed male privilege pre-transition.

Yes, the majority of MtF trans people grew up being forced to be 'male' and had what little male privilage you can get when you're trans. We were also -for the most part- beaten, raped, excluded and abused because we're different. When you say that a trans woman doesnt belong in womans space because she was forced to live as someone they were not, you are completely invalidating her identity. A Transwoman was never a man, I would trade every moment of what I lived growing up to have what you do by being 'normal'.

Female spaces are not being threatened by Trans people, we are and always have been women. All we want is to be allowed to live our lives in peace with ourselves. If we're abused we want to go somewhere safe, if we're hurt we want to be treated with the same respect anyone else would be. For some facts for you, since the beginning of records there are ZERO incidents of trans women having attacked / perved / invaded women in a womans safe space.

Ever.

That is a verifiable fact, you can feel free to look it up.

This hasnt been the most eloquent of posts because its been a long day and im tired, I dont normally hang about on mumsnet, but im going to follow this and see if there is a constructive conversation to be had.

Finally a question for you, you want trans people to use the toilet of their birth? That means trans men using the womans bathrooms, womans safe spaces etc , for those who are unaware trans men have deep voices, bushy beards and the physical effects of testosterone. Would you rather it that way round?

Yes I believe you can - you can test at the zygote level. It's very difficult to do, though, and processes which exist only for determining sex are banned in most countries, because of sex selective abortion. I read about a couple who had selective IVF to rule out a genetic condition and their doctor had not obscured the test results which displayed the XX/XY chromosome findings, and they were a little upset by it, because of course not all of the embryos survive, and they found it more upsetting to know that they lost a potential daughter or son rather than it being an identityless embryo.

italian those interesting links. My understanding (not a scientist) is that you could in theory test a sperm for it's chromosomes and determine whether it will produce a girl or a boy. There may be some cells that are not developed as male or female at a very early stage but they will alway develop according to the chromosomes in the sperm. I think it's misleading to say sex is on a spectrum. I'm not even sure I think a person who can reproduce is truly intersex even if they have some characteristics of the other sex.

Even to the extent there are more degrees of intersex conditions than previously thought, it doesn't mean a person with a penis could ever be a woman. At most:

Penis = male or intersex
Vagina = female or intersex.

YY definitely. I feel very uncomfortable about people labelling and "accepting" their very young children as trans. Accepting without comment is one thing - celebrating and making it into a big deal can encourage children to really assimilate that into their reality, whereas it might have been a passing phase. I do feel it's really important to emphasise that it's okay to be sporty and a girl, uninterested in fashion and a girl, wear make up and be a boy, basically do whatever you like as your own gender, that's okay. Teenagers are different, although I am also concerned by arguments made in other threads about teens grabbing onto anything, something, to be different but also part of a group. I definitely did that as a teenager and I don't think it's patronising to say that a lot of teenagers go through that phase.

This is a huge problem that I have with the whole gender politics movement - partly that teenage identity thing, but also partly because when I read sites about it where it's the most important thing in somebody's life that they must define their sexuality and/or their gender under one of increasingly multitudes of headings, and this is such a big deal, to the point that they spend hours upon hours contemplating what they are. Talking around the subject, redefining. I can understand the drive to understand where you fit into the world, but I'm just not sure it's healthy so fixate so much on what basically amounts to sex. I mean, surely, just pursue relationships with people you are attracted to when you're both available, and discuss what you both want from a relationship, whether it's exclusivity, casual sex, whatever.

Is that dismissive of me? I just have to admit that sometimes I read these message boards or websites and I just think, what a load of unnecessary angst. Perhaps it's because I had a child young, god knows kids suck your energy and time so that I just don't have time to worry about whether I might be in the miniscule difference between this or that shade of sexuality. I'm sure that people questioning their gender/sexual identity must also have jobs, homes, families, hobbies, but just don't speak directly about them on those forums. It's confusing, though.

Here's an interesting article about women's sports (I say interesting, I probably mean silly).

men in women's sports.

I think the whole issue of trans kids is a massive mine field. I know the parents want to do the best etc. But it is very important to know the facts. This is fascinating. Of course it is not the whole story. But at least it is from people within the transgender and intersex 'community'.

www.youtube.com/watch?t=33&v=G0UVnp8_NGc

My dd is very much what is sometimes called a 'tom boy'. I never call her a tom boy if I can help it. She is who she is. She loves to get dirty and grubby, she hardly ever wears skirts or dresses and almost always wears trousers. But she is a girl. My son wants to wear my lipstick, but he is a boy. I think parents need to be very sure what is going on with their children. I worry sometimes that fear of being gay can lead people to think they may be trans.

I know my mum is really into energy and stuff. I know that most people on here tend to disbelieve in things like that, which is fair. When I was pregnant we did that dowsing thing, out of fun really, although the dowsing has always been accurate for everything else, it came up with DS being a girl. This was the day we'd had the scan, and XP and I knew, but nobody else did. So it wasn't that thing where you subconsciously know the answer, because it would have been opposite.

And weirdly - I often catch myself "feeling" that DS is a girl. I can't really explain it except that he just sometimes feels like a girl. He is very clearly socialised as a boy, though, he has "typical boy" interests (superheroes, video games and toilet humour), eschews anything pink, is active, noisy, competitive, plays with mostly boys, is very clear that he is a boy and that this gender divide is important to him (though we try to minimise it). Yet to me he sometimes feels like a girl, in an energy sense, I suppose.

I have not and I would not ever mention this to him. Quite possibly it's entirely due to the fact I have a sister but no brothers, so that model for "person smaller than me who is sometimes annoying" is female. But I find it interesting and somewhat strange. Of course, it's very unlikely that he will later identify as transgender. But in some ways, I feel as though I wouldn't be overly surprised. There was a thread a while back about MNers knowing that their children were gay from a young age and I found that very interesting. It's clear to me that DS likes girls, even now. I'm open minded to whatever he is, but I just find it fascinating to watch them discover themselves.

Having been a bit waffly in a thread about Feminism elsewhere, I thought it was about time I checked this board out to clarify my thoughts. This thread has been fantastically informative. I have a friend who's a feminist journalist and five/six years ago she was getting a lot of shit on the comments on her article and on twitter for being a "biological determinist" (when did TERF start being used? I don't remember it but in fact I was very taken aback at how vile people were being so might have missed it, not knowing what it meant). I asked her about it out of concern and she just said "no, no, no, don't ever read the comments!" and then we moved onto general talk so I have remained hugely ignorant of this stuff. "The New Backlash" blog was very informative. The page of extremely violent comments about TERFS is unbelievable. Thanks for the insight - I will lurk here more often.

Thanks QueenStromba I've come across Mark/Maritza Angelo Cummings from my searches on the internet before and also on the group at www.facebook.com/groups/genderdiscusssion/

Thanks iisme that is helpful.

I think you need brackets in some of the sections to avoid trolls or something

Thanks for the new york times link Italian.

The author is an interesting case. The idea of butch lesbians being socialised trans came up on one of the other trans threads and this is basically what happened to her (this is not misgendering, she's happy with male or female pronouns these days). She was a lesbian and a bodybuilder so people just assumed she was a transman. She started looking at trans sites on the internet and just got sucked into the whole thing - within six month she'd had a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy. This was a grown woman in her late 30s - you can just imagine how easily it takes hold in impressionable teenagers. This was 12 years ago and she's been a pretty prominent transactivist for most of this time but has recently woken up to the fact that it's all bullshit. She's now trying to put right some of the damage she's done as a transactivist, particularly to children.

There's more about it here if anyone's interested (she turns up in the comments): gendertrender.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/transgender-activists-campaign-against-puberty-blockers-for-transgender-children/

Here's her youtube channel: www.youtube.com/user/markangeloc/featured

Aargh didn't think you needed to do those brackets any more!
link

Isn't that bit just saying that they look as if they could go either way but the presence of the Y chromosome (or not) determines which way they'll develop.

Interesting article though.

Sorry going back to male privilege (just read this thread) someone posted this on another thread yesterday which I think gives a really clear explanation of what being socialised as a girl means: feministcurrent.com/12254/you-cant-feel-race-but-can-you-feel-female-on-rachel-dolezal-caitlyn-jenner-and-unspeakable-questions/

Also, most mttpeople I know haven't transitioned until at least their 30s, meaning that they have had many years of enjoying male privilege, even if they might not have wanted it.

Mmm, very interesting discussion but I basically wanted to say that I very much agree with the article.

My main problem with transgenders is the physical mutilation side of it, but since I read on mumsnet that most transgenders do not get operated, I have less of a problem with the issue.

I'm sure that if I had been offered an operation to become a man at the age of 13, in my innocence I would have jumped at it. As it is I love being a woman but cannot and will not conform to the female stereotype.

Just wonder what any one makes of this article, please?

I found it very odd and bizarre. Especially the idea .... "That the two sexes are physically different is obvious, but at the start of life, it is not. Five weeks into development, a human embryo has the potential to form both male and female anatomy."

I thought sex was determined at conception by the paternal genetic material in the sperm?

Any thoughts, anyone?

www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943

Very interesting www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/18/is-there-a-right-age-to-change-ones-sex/transitioning-is-for-those-who-can-vote-and-drink

lightningsprite your post at 16:42:12 is spot on! Re Most trans women have gone through an immense amount of grief due to gender dysphoria. Many have suffered substantial bullying and rejection. They suffer workplace discrimination. I've seen it estimated that roughly 50% of self-identified transgender individuals have experienced sexual violence.

This is such a horrible and sad statistic.

I totally agree We need safe spaces for women, and we need safe spaces for trans women, though those spaces don't necessarily need to overlap.

I have found the Facebook page www.facebook.com/groups/genderdiscusssion/ really helpful.