General Trans Discussion Thread

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/drag-queens-banned-from-performing-at-free-pride-glasgow-event-over-fears-acts-will-offend-trans-10405214.html

It was Glasgow pride! - I believe the ban was reversed. Drag is often offensive to women, but it was only listened to once men complained it seems and then the social justice warriors leapt into action.

I have to agree with Felas here - it's not how people look, it's which sex they are. We trust people to go into the correct toilet and don't want to check their genitals, but because it's an honour system, that means that women still have the right to eject men if they are acting inappropriately.

Can I say, I (and many women) don't find FTT as intimidating as MTT - they often have different reason, they're generally smaller (ie. female sized), and very importantly, they lack a penis to rape me with, as well as being much, MUCH more likely to have transitioned for social reasons rather than sexual.

I was nodding to your post til you wrote this

Also please enjoy sharing a bathroom with Buck Angel and plenty of other heavily masculine trans guys.

You don't get it at all do you?
I think most women just don't want to lose the right to challenge a creepy looking/behaving male (whether or not he's wearing a dress) in the loo/changing room whatever. In placed where the law has changed, women have found themselves accused of hate crime for doing this.
Some men are voyeurs. Some get turned on by the sound of women using the toilet. Some like to indecently expose themselves "by accident" to women. This happens all the time. I can't support changes to legislation that allow these perverts greater access to women's spaces, even if it does make trans peoples lives easier.
I doubt that buck angel is going to film under the door of the cubicle next to him, or flash his genitals to the women in the gym changing room.
Jesus. On one thread we have a load of guff about how women should protect themselves from rape be avoiding being vulnerable around men and on another we get told males aren't a risk and won't exploit laws to abuse women. Can't you see the inconsistencies here?

The bathroom concept is simple - look male, use the gents. Look female, use the ladies.

Wrong. Men haven't been excluded from women's spaces due to the way they look. It's because they're men.

Clarification points:

1. LGBT events don't view 'drag' as mocking trans people. A few trans people have that opinion. I'm distinctly not one of them. The general public often confuses the two (we aren't the the same!)

2. People who do drag can be straight (I know some), bisexual or even female (there are female drag queens, as well as drag kings). They also quite often use female facilities such as bathrooms.

3. There isn't a new 'trend' for trans women to be non-op. It's a personal choice depending on how dysphoric you find your own personal genitalia. The waiting list for lower surgery for trans women in this country is growing at the moment quite dramatically and is a particular issue within the trans community.

The bathroom concept is simple - look male, use the gents. Look female, use the ladies. Just show respect to the other occupants. You have cubicles anyway. Personally I just prefer the idea of closed unisex cubicles which are starting to gain traction. Makes the whole thing irrelevant.

If you want to determine which bathroom to use based on genitalia who is doing the checking? Also please enjoy sharing a bathroom with Buck Angel and plenty of other heavily masculine trans guys.

Update on legal challenge to the "bathroom laws" in US schools

Also interesting as the case is being brought by a transman, given the majority of TRA are transwomen

So beautifully phrased, Annie!

uglyswan thanks for the heads-up, as I didn't know that.

(Fuckers to the left of us, fuckers to the right.... argh.)

Annie - the link you posted is from LifeNews, an extremely right-wing, anti-choice Catholic website. I'm sorry if I'm coming across as the self-proclaimed thread police here, but a) sources matter and b) can we not give those fuckers the traffic? I found the same story on Snopes which also includes an interesting tidbit on Transadvocate's attempts at damage control.

There's a new documentary on iPlayer called Transgender Love if anyone is interested. Not sure whether I want to watch it or not to be honest, probably will as an academic exercise...

Thanks for posting that link, ibelieve.

I've posted on trans threads before about my local authority's new relationships and sex policy. I was alarmed to see it referenced Mermaids as a source of support for professionals. I think an email with that article attached will be my next communication with the author of the policy.

Trans activists are trying to get drag banned from LGTB Pride events because they claim drag mocks transwomen, user147. Only genuine transwomen should be allowed to cross-dress. Mad but true.

The trouble with allowing transwomen who have had surgery into women's spaces is that they don't necessarily pass any better than any other transwoman. You end up with a situation where visibly male people are accessing women's loos, etc. No one's suggesting genital checks, we can only go on appearance and women should be able to raise the alarm if they see a man in the loos (not that it's only loos by any means.) I feel that no visibly male people should be allowed into women's spaces. One of the transwomen I know has had SRS but he hasn't a hope of passing. He looks even more masculine than the one who has kept his penis, though neither looks female.

If a man is dressing as a woman but has no plans to have a sex change then he is not a transwoman but a cross dresser surely. Or even a drag queen.

It's already been pointed out that most trans women don't have genital surgery but a man doesn't have to even try to look like a woman anymore to be trans and have access to women's spaces. Look up Danielle muscato for an example.

singing that's what worries me- I've only really found out about all this through mumsnet- I work with the General public in a health care environment, if I haven't been made aware that a patient is trans- no surgery/ looks like Danielle Moscado(sp?) and I find them in a female ward bathroom and say something could I be at risk of suspension for misgendering?! (The things insomnia makes you worry about!)

In fact, were you to question this in public, non-anonymously, you risk even losing your job in today's climate.

user1477282676 - you are not keeping up with what's going on in the world of trans. The majority of transwomen are now "non-op" - they haven't had and have absolutely no plans to have bottom surgery usually because they are completely comfortable with their penises. They are not accepting the "got a dick - use the men's" option and anyone who suggests that this option is a sensible one is now a transphobic bigot who should stfu then diaf.

Many cross dressers now claim trans identity and nobody is allowed to question this without the risk of being doxed, threatened, banned from whichever forum or site you're on etc. Things are looking very worrying.

I feel sorry for young teens today.

I think the simplest rule is this

Got a dick? Use the men's toilets.

No dick? Women's is fine.

Or is that simplistic?

But none of the drag queens I know have any desire to use women's toilets. They all have sex as men with other men too...I don't know one straight drag queen...only gay ones, and I know a lot of them due to my work.

If a man is dressing as a woman but has no plans to have a sex change then he is not a transwoman but a cross dresser surely. Or even a drag queen.

User147 you speak of those who "are transitioning but are still pre-op" as if this is the normal path trans people follow. But it isn't. Only 20% of transwomen have "bottom surgery". The remaining 80% have and intend to keep their male genitalia. As roughly two thirds of transwomen are sexually attracted to women, and these are the group most likely not to go through SRS, not wanting transwomen in our sex-segregated spaces is a no-brainer. Of course most are safe, just as most men are safe, but bitter experience is behind the creation of spaces set aside for women for their safety and dignity.

There is also the issue of AGP. There are a range of different areas in which AGP emerges. The most obvious is cross-dressing but there are others. Some get fulfillment by performing what they perceive as womanly activities, joining a knitting circle for example. Others are turned on by intruding into female spaces: getting a kick out of knowing women are alarmed. Others may get excited by listening or peeping at women urinating. Some find menstruation arousing. Obviously this is extreme, but one transwoman blogged about collecting used sanpro from bins. Fetishes are found among males, and transwomen are no exception. By no means all transwomen are autogynaephiliac, of course, but the fact that so many appear to be is a further good reason for standing firm against allowing any male person, regardless of how they identify, access to women's showers, prisons, loos, etc. The shadow of male violence is always present when males access female-only spaces, but the thought that someone in the next cubicle is wanking because he's listening to women using the loo arouses its own sense of violation and repugnance.

The problem is...in demonizing all transwomen, there will be victims.

Uh, no, there won't.

Unless you classify "male bodied person who truly identifies as woman being told to leave the women's loo and use the men's" as violence.

Transwomen are attacked and sometimes killed by men who are unhappy with finding a penis where they expected a vagina. Or who are uncomfortable with merely being attracted to a person that then turns out to be male. Or just by homophobic assholes.

Women not wanting males in our spaces has nothing to do with it.

Perhaps some transwomen get attacked by men in the men's changing rooms, but SO ARE GAY MEN. That does not make them female, and the solution to that is not to let them all into women's spaces.
Which by the way would completely defeat the purpose, as any man who wants to beat up other males could just identify his way into the women's space, too.
The ONLY people who profit from women's spaces being opened to males are those who want to harm women.

user147 what about those who don't want to transition or change anything at all about their sexed bodies?

There is case after case of male-bodied trans people (teens and adults) who are offered safe, private third-space facilities where they will be neither at risk from other males, nor will they be in women's sex-segregated facilities, and they have refused, because nothing less than invading women's space will do. It isn't about "we just want to pee in safety" or whatever the current slogan is, it's about male entitlement.

Agreed, User, and these are offered and refused, because little of this is about accommodation and much of it is about validation.