General Trans Thread Part 3

I agree, I thought it was a very biased report, why was there no doctor challenging the ridiculously high testosterone level of 10 and explaining the differences between male and female bodies? You don't develop a female pelvis and muscle composition just by taking a bit of oestrogen. I suspect female athletes are reluctant to speak out against it because the trans lobby will smear them.
Men in wigs and make up, and necklaces. Fine if that's how they want to look but they look more like Dick Emery in drag than women.
I'd quite like to be a swift, it looks fun, but I know I can't become a swift no matter how much I tell people I identify as a swift. (realises she has now left herself open to bird brain jibes.....)

Puerto - good point. For those who haven't come across Faludi other than on this thread, she wrote "Backlash: the undeclared war against women" which I think is a fantastic piece of writing. The thesis is basically that everytime feminism looks like it might actually be achieving progress towards equality, there is a massive backlash against it - think "women can't have it all" articles in the press, Hollywood going from "9 to 5" (brilliant satire of workplace sexism) to "Working Girl" (Meg Ryan simpers, undermines genuinely competent female boss played by Sigourney Weaver, and gets Harrison Ford as her reward), etc. It was one of the great feminist books of the 90s.

So to read that article is a bit like seeing Achilles shot in the heel - one of my great heroes brought low by the hopeless men in her personal life.

It seem like the doctor at the end was more critical but he was barely given a chance to speak. Why did no one mention that the top women's records across all sports are generally 90% that of men. Why do they think this is? And the guy saying its a "non issue"? Ffs it's the usual "women being hysterical over nothing" narrative.

The thing that annoys me was there was no-one there to talk about physiology or the disparity between female and male sports performances or the examples of average male athletes cleaning up when they compete in women's sports. They asked a bunch of MTTs who all said they got less strong after taking hormones. So what? A sociology professor talking out of his arse and one woman who was there to talk about the shootings in the US who bravely suggested this is unfair on female athletes.

I've watched a few seconds of that video and so far it's a bunch of obvious males in wigs and make up saying trans women have no advantage. Well sorry but just look at them, they are taller, bigger and stronger than any female I've seen and they aren't even athletes! They are delusional

Found the link on YouTube re the BBC debate about transgender competitors:

Apologies if I've got my facts wrong but didn't Kellie admit that she nearly strangled her ex-wife and it was one of her daughters that stopped her !!!

I hadn't heard of her until I read her Guardian article a couple of weeks ago

Do people on FWR really not recognize who Susan Faludi is? Reading people just referring to her as the daughter of a transwoman makes me sad.

Not meaning to derail. I like this thread.

I think this will lead to girls and women retreating from competitive sport. The testosterone level is set ridiculously high at 10. Most women have levels below 2.3. PCO can push it up to nearer 4 but reducing the max testosterone to 5 would make more sense, and saying that if you have a Y chromosome you can't compete at a high level as a woman. There are lots of other things you can do but competitive female sport shouldn't be one of them. I got annoyed with the bloke who kept saying the level playing field doesn't exist. that isn't an excuse to make things even more unequal.
If some men want to dress as women and believe they have special girlie brains (a notion I find offensive) then if it makes them feel happier i won't object unless women are actually discriminated against by their behaviour.

This is gaslighting of women on a mass scale; telling them that their realities and bodies and experiences can be reduced to nothing more than a feeling. I'm also sick of the only opposing view usually being presented as coming from a right wing/religious angle, when imo, the whole notion of gender is regressive and conservative.

And love how KM ignored falon Fox when discussing how it could happen in, for example boxing.

I need tea to calm down now.

Thank goodness the one panel member who isn't buying into this. And the comments from the public.

This is infuriating. How anyone can look at KM and not see that he's a homophobic, misogynistic autogynephile (with a history of violence against women) is baffling.

Ffs, typical BBC whitewash. They are completely missing the point.

Not mentioning actual hormone levels.

Oh and Kelly Maloney

Wrong body, lady brain. Its full on bingo.

BBC are discussing the inclusion of trans athletes on their Sunday morning discussion programme shortly.

I suspect that in the coming years we're going to see some very high profile/powerful couples in the UK/USA where one of the partners is a transwoman. Because it allows a man who would otherwise be gay to deny his homosexuality AND claim to be a liberal, tolerant, open minded dude, on the right side of history.

Not disagreeing with you here but just a ponder as most of the high profile Trans-women at the moment also appear to be 'gay', that is still prefer sex with women. . .

I wonder if it somehow become more of a case of 2 gay men with one posing as a Trans-woman to aid the others career. . . .

Not that that would ever happen; I mean a marriage of convenience in Hollywood or in politics...............nah!

Thanks for everyone's thoughts and so sorry for not having had time to add more of my own. I would tend to agree though that it is likely that women report crimes against them more often than men. (I'd be curious about the effects of gangs - in the US there are some mega gangs that control vast numbers of prison populations but I don't know if they are as prevalent in women's prisons as in men's. I suspect not and that might be one reason for women seemingly being more violent. Still open to the possibility that they actually are more violent though (women). Trying to keep an open mind and all that. Against all information out there...

That's interesting archery about the difference between the situations in the US and UK prisons. And about the self harming. So sad. 81% in for non-violent crimes is I think much less than in many countries.

And interesting stats analysis vestal.

Looking forward to the Olympics but hoping that if there are trans athletes taking part their identities will be revealed. I think that if they just say there are some transwomen amongst the teams but don't say who they are as looks like might happen it's just going to cause speculation that's bad for everyone.

31% grew up in care.

That's a heartbreaking statistic. We are failing kids in care so badly.

addendum "...that's 28% of the total prison population who are reported as having self-harmed "

It's fascinating that Paris Lees - an English journalist based in the UK - cites US stats to back those assertions up, when the stats on women in prison in the UK are fairly easily available.

Women in prison account for 5% of the overall prison population. 81% of that 5% are there for nonviolent crimes.

But hey, Paris is right! Women prisoners do harm women in prison! Guess which women they harm!

Themselves. They mostly harm themselves. Despite being only 5% of the prison population, women prisoners account for 28% of the prisoners who are reported for self-harming. (That's not 28% of the 5%, that's 28% of the total prison population.)

This is not really all that surprising, when you consider the women prison population as a whole: 46% have been victims of domestic violence (one agency reports 80% of the women prisoners they have contact with having suffered domestic violence). 46% of women in prison have attempted suicide at some time in their life. 53% have reported emotional, physical or sexual abuse during childhood. 31% grew up in care.

Then you add on random facts, eg that women in prison are more likely to be disciplined (for similar offences) than men in prison, and a picture really has emerged.

I don't know the stats for trans women in prison, but all the cases that I have read about in the past few years have involved violent (and incredibly violent) crimes, and often the prisoners involved haven't declared their desire to transition until they are in prison.

This seems extraordinary and goes against what most people would tend to believe. Is this an area in which we, the public etc are incredibly misinformed? I get that women might be more likely to report sexual assault more often but you'd think they'd take that kind of thing into account before reporting it?

If one in four women is raped by a man and reports it in the general population (25%), then 4.7% of sexual assault for prisons, where the female inmates are the most violent, what is it, 1% of the general population, is a surprisingly small number.
So means the average man is five times more likely to rape a woman than a female criminal.

Of course, those numbers aren't worth much, considering that it is always a question of who reports what.

BUT if we are going to take those figures at face value, then surely, it is more merciful to place transwomen AND transmen in men's prison, as the number of sexual assaults there is only half as high!

My thoughts exactly Hermione.

It'll be a cold day in hell before I listen to Paris Lees