Changing gender without any medical care/advice/opinion - just saying 'I'm a woman' and it being so

These threads get so bogged down with the ins and outs of bathrooms and such like, but the real issue, for me anyway, is that of truth, living a truthful life and living in a world where truth, facts and reality are upheld. the self id proposals chick that completely out the window as that article expresses so well.

Puff paw that article is outstanding.

Does anyone know how all this started? It seems extraordinary to me that we've gone so incredibly quickly to self identification and anyone who thinks even slightly differently is a transphobe. How did it happen? Governments don't usually do things unless they are lobbied. Who is lobbying? Cui bono?

Do we know of any MPs who are on the feminist side on this? Just seen Stella Creasy (who I usually love) tweeting about trans phobia.
Was it Caroline Flint who raised concerns previously?

Haven't rtft but this article was good www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-orwellian-nightmare-of-transgender-politics/20116#.WXesX7HTWhD

But my colleague's view is also that it is difficult to imagine that, after living an almost entire life as a man, including under wartime conditions, that Barry would not have started to "identify" [not in a TRA use of the word] as a man in daily life.

Well, yeah, in a way.

I also "identify" as man if I pretend to be male on the internet. (Which I sometimes do in order to not be harrassed) I then try to act like the man I would be if I were a man.

I guess if you do this full time, you can get to the point that you are mildly surprised to find that your trousers don't contain a penis when you go to the toilet. But all this proves is that "gender identity" is learnt.

And instead of harming themselves with surgery, transmen could just learn to identify as women.

There's probably some few people for whom transsexuality is a body-map issue - the brain has a map of the body, and in some people, a body part is missing, resulting in them feeling that body part does not belong to them.
That probably can't be cured with psychotherapy.

But this new wave of female trans who "feel like men" and many of whom just so happen to be lesbian - no one will tell me that this is not caused by internalized misogyny.

Masculinity can definitely be learned.

Some of the most foul mouth abuse I have seen has come from transmen. Ragingly misogynistic. Really foul. With a female bent. So a bit more 'lavatorial' than sexual.

It is outrageous that James Barry is now considered transgender. She had no other option at that time as a female but to masquerade as a man

I've discussed this historical case with a colleague working on writing her/his history. My colleague's view is interesting: that yes, Miranda Barry needed to become James Barry to do what she wanted to do.

But my colleague's view is also that it is difficult to imagine that, after living an almost entire life as a man, including under wartime conditions, that Barry would not have started to "identify" [not in a TRA use of the word] as a man in daily life.

My colleague is very far from a transactivist (although also not really a radical feminist), and I think there's a point there - it shows that masculinity can be learned. Which is precisely the point that any of us would want to make, I think. That gender roles - masculinity & femininity - are learned, ie socially constructed.

But my colleague's work doesn't attempt to erase Barry's femaleness, and recognises that her cross-dressing came about because of the restrictions on Victorian women. My colleague is not the English HEritage people either!

Pen names in male names are of course still going on. Take J K Rowling for instance. This is a good link regarding female writers

mashable.com/2015/03/01/female-authors-pen-names/#UAg9B7MGGPqD

It is outrageous that James Barry is now considered transgender. She had no other option at that time as a female but to masquerade as a man.

Don't forget the Brontes who published as Currer, Acton and Ellis Bell, clearly trans! Oh wait. It was because it wasn't respectable for women to write novels. God these ignorant ahistorical fuckers drive me mad.

Fucking hell. Next it'll be Gertrude Bell as transman for wearing a split skirt for riding horseback astride.

George Eliot, is she now a transgender figure, too? Or is it just a clothes and hair thing?

This is meddling with the history of women's lived experiences.

And am I am transperson because my MN name is gender-obscuring? Utter madness.

How fucking dare they do that to James Barry. I just read her recent bio and I'm furious.

Classics erasure of women's oppression there, NoLoveOfMine! I suppose that would make Jane Austen a trans man too. What rot!

It's just fucking stupid. I have no words. Next will be I can identify as any animal as I want.

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/25/secret-transgender-victorian-surgeon-feted-by-heritage-england

Apparently a woman who was forced to claim to be a man as women weren't allowed to practice is now "trans"

Could you try asking her to define what a woman is notafish? Or ask what she thinks about anyone who merely decides they're "defining as a woman" having access to women's refuges or rape crisis centres? I empathise with the frustration as I experience similar with some friends.

If labour are supportive of this they can change their slogan to 'for the few, not the many'

I'm also very scared, having teenage daughters, what this means for their future. However, BBC programmes showing sad children transitioning have got to my eldest and she rolls her eyes at any of my criticisms.

It's very graphic but on the basis that a picture is worth a thousand words it might help if more people knew what's involved in gender reassignment surgery (for both men and women) and saw the effects on previously healthy young women of binding their breasts. How the medical and psychology professions aren't up in arms about this absolutely beats me. How can it be ethical to be pushing people, who in most cases are clearly very troubled, down a surgical route instead of getting them some sort of therapy? I'm not one for conspiracy theories but Big Pharma has a very obvious interest here.

'this had shifted a wee bit...'
Thought you were talking about the reassignment surgery for a moment there.

And yes, they took it down because of the petition itself. On this thread or the AIBU one somebody has pasted the explanation in.

There's a new 38 degrees petition. Get in quick before this one is also taken down.

WHAT happened to the 38 Degree petition? I signed, but have also seen the notice that it's been withdrawn because of content? What comments were left which could have caused this?

Or were 38 Degrees pressured about the nature of the petition itself?

There is an alternative petition here
www.change.org/p/theresa-may-mp-a-review-of-how-laws-based-on-gender-identity-conflict-with-laws-based-on-biological-sex?

As someone who has been wanked at as well as being rounded on by a group of 8 or so men and verbally abused (sexual language) on tube carriages at night, I wasn't quite as opposed to Corbyn's suggestion of women-only night carriages as others who called it "barmy". Now he's happy for men to self-identify as women and have access to the most vulnerable of safe spaces... that really is fucking barmy.