Can someone explain the feminism - transgender clash...

There is quite a lot of fetishisation that goes with trans women. Someone on a thread once had a delve into the trans forums, and the dominant themes were of men who were turned on by wearing women's clothes, being called a woman, being in women's spaces etc
Which also explains the overly sexualised appearance many many transwomen adopt.

But this does also mean there is a disconnect on what the two groups value.
If you have always craved and longed for a man to assume you are a woman and wolf whistle you, then you are going to have a very different take on the problem of women being harassed in public (or even in changing rooms)
If your idea of 'being a woman' is girls nights in doing each other's hair and make up, then you are going to over obsess on missing out of talking about boys and periods

'I think we (everyone) should be fighting to make it acceptable for men to wear makeup and dresses if they want. '

Why? All the huge problems in the world. Who cares if men can wear dresses or not. They're just dresses.

I am a radical feminist (though quite a tired one). I really reject this idea that that makes me anti-trans. As I said upthread, I have problems with some aspects of trans theory and trans activism. This is logically consistent with my theory and politics around gender in other areas (again, I have doubts that about 'born that way' in gay activism, though as I'm gay I generally get away with saying that).

I'm genuinely sad that my political analysis puts me at odds with so many trans activists. I would rather that wasn't the case, because I think our struggles have much in common and we should be acting in solidarity with each other. But I've been a feminist activist for 35 years and I'm not going to suddenly start believing in a 'female brain' because some NUS women's officer tells me I have to. It just doesn't fit with how I understand the world. That doesn't mean I'm personally or politically hostile to trans people.

I must say, though, I think this will all die down soon. I lived through the feminist 'sex wars' of the 80s, and loads of sectarian spats since. I also think the trans movement is very new and in many ways similar to how lesbian and gay activism was in the 80s, before it got all grown up and sophisticated. We'll all move past this.

Am I right in thinking that many feminists do not have issues with men who have undergone a full sex change and live as women?

I don't have a problem with any individual living how they want to.

Personally my issue with some transactivisits and a lot of the trans narrative is the idea of 'living like a woman'. What is 'living like a woman'? We're all different, we all have different tastes, preferences, hobbies, talents etc. Some women like to wear heels, some prefer jeans.

If you look at what MTT people say, they often refer to stereotypes. 'I knew I was trans because I wanted to wear dresses/play with dolls/wear make up'. It's a story that goes 'I was born an x, but I want to do y things, so I must really be a y.' And with that ' if you're not trans, then you must be happy to do the things associated with your sex.' Like many women, I'm not particularly happy being treated as a woman. I'd quite like equal pay, no sexism and better conviction rates for crimes against women.

The trans narrative seems to me to perpetuate sexist stereotypes. I'd much rather say 'You're male because of your genetic makeup and sexual organs, and actually you'll never be able to really, truly change that. (Not in our lifetime anyway). But you can still wear what you want, do what you want, be interested in whatever you want.'

I think we (everyone) should be fighting to make it acceptable for men to wear makeup and dresses if they want. We shouldn't be pretending that someone born xy is the same as someone born xx.

I think a very very small proportion of the totally trans community are vocal activist. I know two, and both of them keep their heads down and get on with life. Neither draw any attention to being trans and would rather people assume they were born women. I don't actually know what sort of surgery they've had.
If a conversation about periods came up, they would keep quiet in the same way my friend with chronic anorexia would. Neither would start screaming discrimination because they can't join in...

Yet the only blogs and articles we see are ones by people calling for the renaming of female bodily functions so as not to offend transwomen

Totally agree about following the money, whatdoiget.

transgenderreality.com/2015/11/20/its-a-girls-dick/

Transsexual people are people who feel they would be happier living with the body and social role of the opposite sex. They don't believe they are that sex (on the whole) hence why they have to transition.
The modern narrative of trans says that you are the sex you identify as - that woman, man and in fact neither woman or man are feelings you can have independent of your body. I disagree. Woman is something we become, through both the condition of having female bodies and being perceived as having female bodies by society and therefore being socialised into the 'feminine' gender role.
Gender identity is socially constructed, not innate. The idea of innate gender identity is utterly harmful to women (and men) but mostly to girls and women. I can't support an ideology that a) has no evidence to support it b) contradicts my understanding of the world and c) actively harms women.

There also seems to be a lot of money to be made out of selling hormones to people, rather than trying to help them to accept themselves in the bodies they already have. I read a blog where a mother of a transboy suspected a link between the gender counsellor that her daughter saw, and the surgeon who amputated her teenage daughter's breasts. There are some unscrupulous people out there and it does no good to blindly accept all this stuff I don't think.

OP, not all feminists are anti trans. Liberal feminists and Queer feminists tend to be inclusive and sympathetic of trans and non binary people. Radical feminism not so much. The FWR forum on Mumsnet is predominantly Radical feminist.

I understand that it is because gender is a concept that varies from from country to country and means different things to different people.
I have no idea what my gender is but I know what my sex is given that I have periods, breasts and gave birth etc....
i wear trousers and no lipstick: I am still female and don't like the idea that by doing this my sex could be in question.
It can get quite heated!

Yy sparechange I remember seeing a headline a few years ago 'man gives birth' amazing! Of course on reading the article, it turned out it was a woman who wore trousers and used a male name. If gender roles weren't so rigidly enforced I can't help thinking most people would be a lot happier really.

I believe that there are two 'gender' issues people can have; some have both. These are...

1. Dysphoria about their sexed body (distressed they have breasts, a vagina etc).

1. Social dysphoria (distressed that people see them as a woman).

There doesn't seem to be any evidence that being declared trans by themselves, their parents, Tumblr or a doctor does anything to alleviate their symptoms, nor does surgery. And people with those symptoms have a high suicide rate.

Shouldn't we be trying to find something that does actually alleviate those symptoms?

As very astute people have pointed it, it is what happens when someone is born, raised, socialised and educated as a male - they expect their point of view to be the dominant one.

^this. Plus I'm still not sure how willingly the 80p to every male pound earned is welcomed alongside all the, you know, thongs and stilettos. Sorry, I know you asked for unranty.

Am I right in thinking that many feminists do not have issues with men who have undergone a full sex change and live as women? As in: the idea of being born in the wrong body is not hateful as such?

I am fine with men undergoing gender reassignment and living as women. I do worry that there is still too much of a conveyor belt taking people along a route to transitioning that involves major surgery and sexist assumptions, but I'm pleased to see more trans people challenging that and choosing, for example, to not have full surgical reassignment if it doesn't suit them.

I do get annoyed, though, with the lack of acknowledgement that living as a man for, say, 20, 30 or 40 years in any way affects one's gender identity. It seems to me that for everyone else our lived experience - as white, or as a man, or homosexual - has a huge impact on their sense of self. But many trans activists claim that they have ALWAYS been a woman, so all their experiences have been women's experiences, and they have not imbibed masculinity in any way. Seems to me obvious that someone who transitioned at age 40 may well now be a woman, but they are not a woman in the same way as I am because I have lived my whole life as one. And I would add to that that someone who transitions at the age of 10 is in a rather different position to someone who transitions at 50. Nurture, and lived experience, DOES matter and it annoys me when this is dismissed.

Or what, the other Green Party example where they asked people if they identified as male or non-male
It should put everyone's backs up when there is an attempt to erase women and women's identities in case it offends trans people.

It cuts both ways though. Someone recently posted a link to an article where a transman talked about 'chestfeeding' which is how he fed he children which were born while he was living and identifying as a man.
I'm sorry, but if you are absolutely convinced that you are not a woman and that being a women is utterly wrong for you, then you don't get pregnant, give birth and breastfeed. It is about as woman-defining a thing as you can do! It isn't a rejection of anything female at all...
Yet the La Leche meetings he went to were supposed to call it chestfeeding so as not to make assumptions.

My perception of it is that some trans activists favour displacing women as a way of empowering trans women.

I'll admit right here that I am not hugely knowledgeable on the politics of it, but I've sort of surprised myself by how I feel about it. It makes me angry that women who disagree with the intrusion of men into female safe spaces, or women being discriminated against in favour of trans women are shouted down and accused of hate speech.

I probably haven't articulated that terribly well. I guess it's like an organisation who needs to appoint a chairperson and they've never had a woman as a chair, yet now they have a choice between a woman and a trans woman. They appoint the trans woman to try and be inclusive, but all they've done is discriminate against the woman yet again.

I would be very happy to support men "widening the bandwidth" of what it means to be male in our society. But I get a bit pissed off when they presume to try and widen the bandwidth of womanhood by extending it to mean a bearded man in a dress. There's a bit more to us than that actually I think. I find it very very offensive that some people think wearing certain clothes can turn them into a woman. It doesn't make any sense to me and I can't help being suspicious of their agenda.
Also the famous example of a Green Party conference where it was specifically said that they would like to hear from more women and a man stood up and said he identified as a woman. Just a man in men's clothes saying he was a woman taking a woman's place. That's a BIG problem imo.

puffinity I don't accept the idea of "born in the wrong body"

I believe gender dysphoria is a mental illness and needs treating through therapy, not surgery. IIRC The same Swedish study showed that a few years after surgery, TW were no happier than before and suicide rates spiked. There is no evidence for male and female brains. There is no way to be a woman except biologically. You can't be a woman born in a man's body. You can be a gender non conforming or feminine man, and that's a perfectly fine thing to be. But the whole trans agenda is based on gender stereotypes, and you see it so clearly with the whole "trans kids" thing, it's scary.

I don't have a problem with a man wanting to identify as a woman.

But it should be clear they are a man in spaces where a woman is vulnerable. Such as a bathroom.

A woman walks into the toilet and you don't really notice. A man walks in and your back goes up.

A man dressed as a woman could actually be quite dangerous if they wanted to be

This is long, but I think it sets out some of the issues really helpfully:

www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2016/05/what-gender-anyway

Personally, I think it's a great thing for people to follow the fluidity of their identities, and dismantle how we understand gender. The problem I have with much contemporary trans activism is that it is insistent that gender is inherent - that there are 'male' and 'female' brains. There is no scientific consensus on that, and I suspect the author of the linked piece is right when she suggests there is probably a cluster of different situations/experiences coalescing under the trans label. I do object to being called transphobic because I tend to think that gender is a social construct. (And I am logically consistent, though unfashionable, in that I tend to doubt that sexual orientation is inbuilt either - btw I am lesbian, though I'm fully aware that view gets me labelled homophobic.)

It's not just up to trans people to define how this works, as the meaning of gender is of crucial importance to us all. I worry that if we dismiss any concrete objectivity to sex - in that anyone can say they're a woman and claim that their subjective definition of that is The Truth because it's something they feel strongly - we lose the valuable political concept of women as a sex class. And I guess I don't know any way of accepting the idea of a 'female brain' while still arguing against gender stereotyping.

That doesn't mean I don't fully believe that trans people have been horrendously oppressed and deserve our solidarity in making their lives better. But some of the nonsense that is getting spouted - like the article I read yesterday claiming that it is transphobic to say menstruation is a women's issue - really don't help. And all this labelling of feminists as TERFS and boycotting them is getting beyond ridiculous.

Hermione expressed my views perfectly.

It isn't one simple thing but a number of examples where a small by very vocal minority of the trans community feel that their specific issues trump those of women.

So rather than a debate about whether there is an adequate response by the authorities towards violence against women, and their ability to leave/prosecute/feel safe, we are sidetracked into discussing whether the very few remaining refugee should admit people who penises who self-identify as a woman.

Women in sport, women in prison, women in changing rooms. All hijacked by trans issues so the real issues affecting biological women become secondary discussions.

And the 'degenerdering' of female functions - menstruation, pregnancy, birth, in case it offends trans women who can't experience them.
It puts women' issues secondary to transwomen issues lest the special snowflakes get upset by being left out of period talk

As very astute people have pointed it, it is what happens when someone is born, raised, socialised and educated as a male - they expect their point of view to be the dominant one.