Trans media watch are lobbying mnhq

I'm interested to hear the explanation of trans issues from a cis-gendered and am a regular mom with no connections to any trans lobbying organisation.

What do the posters on this thread not understand about trans issues?

Please quote some transphobic posts.

I am cis-gendered and am a regular mom with no connections to any trans lobbying organisation. However, I agree that Mumsnet does come across as a very transphobic place whenever trans issues are raised. Obviously, not everyone is but there's a horrible nasty theme with all the trans threads. It is very depressing, and often the comments are made with no knowledge of actual trans issues. I'm glad that mnhq are being made aware of this problem in their site. Trans parents need answers to parenting questions too and shouldn't have to wade through transphobic posts to get them.

I don't really agree with you because I do think the growing acceptance of transgenderism has the potential to make gender roles more rather than less fluid, to acknowledge that gender works on a spectrum rather than being something binary, and that has the potential to help rather than hinder feminism

How?

In somewhat more 'traditional' feminism, gender is a hierarchy with masculine at the top, feminine at the bottom. It helps feminists to understand how the world works, it's a class analysis, it provides a framework for understanding male and female interactions. If you understand gender in this sense, you can analyse, understand and then potentially change everything from the personal to the global.

In this somewhat more 'new' feminism, gender is a spectrum with arbitrary and fuzzy definitions at either end and all along it. We all have a place on it somewhere, depending on personal choice and/or feelings (rather like 'personality', really, rather than gender). And so what? What does that analyse? How does this help? 'We're all different'...and then what?

and how are we deciding what is a "girl" thing to be doing, and what is a "boy" thing? In some countries/cultures men wear tunics/robes, which are more or less the same as women's dresses. There are pink Barbie cars (does it being pink transform a "boys toy" into one for girls?) And what about football/soccer? In the UK it's more a boy/man thing, but in the US it's mainly a women and girls sport. But then David Beckham wore a sarong that one time, and played football in the US, did that make him a woman (but only until he put some trousers on, and stopped playing football in the US)?

This whole debate goes nowhere until someone somewhere tells us definitively what is a man and what is a woman without biological descriptors. Up till that point I (and I suspect most people, male and female) are non-binary in gender, and therefore all special snowflakes .

Who has acknowledged that gender is a spectrum? There's no psychological evidence of that at all.

Do you mean sex? Or gender?

Am I being idealistic to think that in a decades time this will be easier, and that the tension comes from trying to resolve the position of people having late transitions? That children who have had support to resolve their gender identity will feel less threatening to women?

I think that it is idealistic to think that things will be 'easier' in another generation, simply because all transpeople will have transitioned in childhood. For starters, a disproportionate number of young people transing are adopted, and/or on the autism spectrum (especially the latter). I hear anecdotally that a fairly high proportion have been sexually abused.

More boys seem to transition at a very, very young age, and girls when they hit puberty. We all know how awful puberty can be for young girls. Especially today when they are bombarded by impossibly unattainable imagery of what a 'woman' should be. That to me is a huge red flag. And why are there never any late FTT transitioners?

It all (to me) points to something more sinister about our society, rather than wrong brain/wrong body stuff.

The country with the highest proportion of MTT is Iran. Homosexuality is illegal there. I honestly worry there is a smattering of gay conversion therapy going on with very young transitioning children.

And I think there will be always late male transitions, who frankly are just more brazen about enjoying their fetish publicly.

It all come back to this odd binary thinking where everything has to be either a binary or a spectrum. Most things in life aren't either.

I do think the growing acceptance of transgenderism has the potential to make gender roles more rather than less fluid, to acknowledge that gender works on a spectrum rather than being something binary, and that has the potential to help rather than hinder feminism.

I'm all in favour of abolishing the concept of gender altogether. In an ideal world I think everyone would have a biological sex but that would be a simple fact and have no bearing on their personality / appearance / tastes / skills or society's expectations of them.

The mere word "transgender" goes against that, though, because it's reinforcing the idea of masculine / feminine stereotypes and I don't think that's helping feminism at all.

Who has acknowledged that gender is a spectrum? There's no psychological evidence of that at all.

So what do you think the solution is Mx? Genuinely? Something's got to give. Who loses?

Thank you Mx.

I guess I can't see transgenderism offering much optimism for fluidity of gender roles, because to me it seems fundamentally invested in those roles. Like playing with boys' toys? You must be a boy! Prefer the softer, gentler, company of girls? You must be a girl! Not keen on either role? Oh, well rather than being a sensible rational person who carves his or her own way doing as you think best, you need a third way: you are gender fluid/nonbinary.

At every level, the options for 'identification' rely on, rather than deconstructing, the expectations of gender. If we said 'girls can wear/do/play with/fancy' anyone and still be a girl', that would be making gender roles less fluid. If we say 'women can have penises, testes, male hormones, and 27 years of having lived as a man as long as they dress like women and wear make up, they are women', that doesn't broaden what it means to be a woman: it narrows things to visual signifiers and feelings.

I'm not afraid (phobic) of trans people - but I am very afraid of the trans narrative.

I think most transcritical people have always acknowledged that gender is a spectrum.

Sex, however, is not.

^by gendered traits I mean typically feminine or masculine pursuits or preferences.

The thing is that if you could magically transform the planet into a utopia where there was no discrimination or violence and everyone respected one another as equals regardless of biology, and no one was respected any less or more according to whether they pursue a career which use to be oolong-dominated or sqoosh-dominated, then it really wouldn't matter that much. Everyone would agree that "a sqoosh is anyone who says they are a sqoosh" and "an oolong is anyone who says they are an oolong" and the only adjustment would be that instead of having sporting events for oolongs and sporting events for sqooshes you would have sporting events for people who have a biology dominated by oolonerayone hormone, and sporting events for people who have a biology dominated by sqookitone hormone without any implication that all the former were generally oolongs and all the latter were generally sqooshes. And everyone would be happy.

But you can't magically make the world a utopia by pretending that it is. You can't pretend there isn't any discrimination and violence against sqooshes.

Mx, how does the concept of "girl brain in boy body", or "boy brain in girl body" make gender roles less fluid? Don't you think it reinforces them ever more strongly by saying that gendered traits are so fundamental, so critical that they even over-ride biology?

Love it miro! Sqooshes are not not-oolongs! Stand with sqooshes!

As someone who identifies as a feminist but is most definitely not Spartacus, I find this one of the more heartening threads I've read on this topic.

Seek I think you've hit the nail on the head in terms of why transgender issues pose problems for feminism. It's to do with reinforcement and entrenchment of gender roles.

I don't really agree with you because I do think the growing acceptance of transgenderism has the potential to make gender roles more rather than less fluid, to acknowledge that gender works on a spectrum rather than being something binary, and that has the potential to help rather than hinder feminism. But I understand your concerns, and respect the cogency with which you make them.

I do also think that while there are some reasonable feminist concerns, in too many cases (not on this thread so much) they are used as a mask for what is transphobia, plain and simple.

So still not Spartacus. But thank goodness for a thread not obsessed with public toilets.

Exit

No that was a 'mix up at birth'. Tsk

And now we have an oolong on the panel of Loose Squooshes.

Stormwhale, part of it should be done by all the checks in place before someone gets a gender recognition certificate, rather than a move to self identification.

The other part is about the vulnerability of the women using the service, not just if someone is a 'safe' transwoman.

So Tara Hudson, who was in prison for violent assault was placed in a male prison based on decisions made by people familiar with her and the case. She was moved to a female prison due to trans activism.

Should a sixty year old who has fully surgically transitioned thirty years ago, has never been violent and is in prison for debt be in a male prison? Probably not.

"a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman"

is as meaningless as

"Brexit means Brexit"

or

Here's a scenario. A little science fiction story. Imagine we make contact with an alien planet. On this planet there are two species of intelligent life, the oolongs and the sqooshes. They mostly cooperate in peace and harmony with one another but it wasn't always like this. The oolongs are larger and more physically powerful than the sqooshes and up until about 100 years ago the sqooshes were basically a slave race, doing all the menial work and disbarred from all the prestigious and lucrative careers despite being of comparable intellectual potential. Happily that changed and now sqooshes are supposed to have equal rights. But there is still a great weight of history and tradition favouring oolongs in many fields. Sqooshes are underrepresented in science, high ranks of law and other professions so well-meaning egalitarians set up programmes to encourage more sqooshes to pursue these careers.

The physical differences between the two species are significant so when there are sporting events obviously these still need to be segregated by species or the winner of everything that needs physical power and strength would always be an oolong and a sqoosh could never aspire to be the very best. So there are oolong events and sqoosh events and that's not speciesist it's a sensible response to genuine physical differences.

Sadly all is not perfect in this world and some oolongs still think sqooshes are inferior and should be in menial roles and sqooshes need to be protected from them. sadly many such oolongs hold positions of power and influence. Violence against sqooshes remains an endemic problem.

Then a new cultural movement starts to say "a sqoosh is anyone who says they are a sqoosh" and "an oolong is anyone who says they are an oolong".

On the face of it it's a wonderful idea. Born out of a new generation who believe oolongs and sqooshes really can be completely equivalent. But start to apply this on the assumption that it is true and the obvious consequences are:
*Born-Oolongs, claiming they are actually sqooshes, start to fill up all the places on the programmes to increase the number of sqooshes in prestigious careers, reducing the life chances of born-sqooshes who are still being discriminated against covertly
*born-oolongs start winning all the sporting events for sqooshes
*there are no longer any safe spaces for sqooshes where oolongs can't go, because any oolong cam get in by claiming to be a sqoosh.
*it is no longer possible to take action on violence or discimination against sqooshes because the terms oolong and sqoosh are becoming functionally meaningless

So what is an intelligent, aspirational sqoosh to do?

(Maybe that's partly because numbers have mushroomed)

And I can see where this is going. If women insist on physical and medical transition before transwomen are welcomed into our spaces, we'll be accused of violence.

Quite.

For my money, the old system worked okay. That is, the system whereby a doctor had to confirm full gender reassignment surgery before a GRC was issued.

The reasons behind the pressure to move to what is essentially a "self-cert" system are at the crux of the current problems.