I am Janice Turner's No 1 fan - another excellent article

Seems you're not allowed to be a butch dyke anymore, but that things that (many) dykes I know do, like shopping from the mens racks, using mens deodorant, having short hair, wearing a baseball cap, not shaving your legs, or generally acting as if you aren't subservient to any man that just happens to cross your path

May I ask a cheeky question? This actually has some backstory where a gay man recently told me that his family tried to stop him 'talking gay' and I didn't say anything but I wondered where the whole 'camp accent' comes from anyway. He seemed to think it was because he was gay that he talked like that. I'm curious (not critical) re your penchant for male attire and how this is a dyke image. Is this for comfort, do you feel most comfortable in clothing designed (in a gendered society) for guys or is it something about subculture or other? I don't like men's clothes for the most part (they never fit and colours are too dull, but I do love their natural fibres and durability) but I an neutral about others wearing them prefer them to heels and frills. I dress in 'mom clothes' so my US friends call them - elastic waist pants and roomy tops, natural fibres if I can get them. No shaving, but men's perfumes make me puke (I actually buy perfume-free everything) ... I guess I'm getting at what came first - the desire or the image and why so many butch women 'go' for men's clothes? Really not saying this is bad or wrong, I'm just curious, especially as so many would say it is 'proof' of latent transness.

Have people seen this? Jo Cox award for women goes to TW: twitter.com/criticalsisters/status/913513499808198658

Seems you're not allowed to be a butch dyke anymore, but that things that (many) dykes I know do, like shopping from the mens racks, using mens deodorant, having short hair, wearing a baseball cap, not shaving your legs, or generally acting as if you aren't subservient to any man that just happens to cross your path................
mean you are transmasc or a TM in denial. This is deeply homophobic, because I'm sure that loving women part comes in there as well, even if not explicitly stated.

I find the K. D. thing very sad (as well as making me very angry), because seems some folks, if they had their way and K. D. did decide she was a he, they would have her on T and destroy her beautiful voice. Seems take a dyke who has a great talent, who is actually appreciated by large numbers of lesbians that I know, and they want to take her away from us, and then us away from ourselves as well.

And let's not forget the attempts to disappear womens and lesbians history, where every women who dressed and passed as a man because there was no other way they could pursue the career they wanted, or live openly with their female partner, is now retrospectively transed............

Well, I think it's just really confused and mostly young people being wound up to fuck, honestly. They're mostly trying to Do Good, they really are. The thing is once you've accepted that trans people are Most Harmed and virtue is protecting the Most Vulnerable Person, the rest flows from there. Other groups posit others as MVP and the same dynamic plays out - the same tactics are used.

yet

I guess it comes down to the reason why women transition. Stephanie Davis Arai said she had never come across a woman who transitioned and wasn't either a lesbian, had past sexual trauma, or was autistic.

To me, it must explain part of it. They see themselves less as actually being a man, and more wanting to escape from being treated like a woman.

Which, I realise, also flies in the face of childbirth and breastfeeding.

But it might be slightly easier to reconcile if your distress does not make you think you are actually a man.

You rarely hear transmen jumping up and down shouting transmen are men.

I don't know. I too don't understand how they can go through it without their distress flying off the scale.

I also think it's a very questionable situation in which to raise a child.

I find it incredibly difficult to express my feelings about this. I understand that breastfeeding, with gender dysphoria must be difficult

What I don't get is that pregnancy and birth must blow this out of the water distress wise and if someone is so resolutely male surely, surely either they would find this just too distressing ...

visibly programming, making use of statistics or formal logic, having short hair, not wearing makeup, or wearing trousers from the mens department

So in their world, there are no mere ordinary non-trans women doing science, mathematics or engineering? Fuck that. Can't they see how deeply sexist that is?

OMG I couldn't get further than this

"Further, HCPs need to be knowledgeable about lactation and chest care during binding and following chest masculinization surgery..."

Chest masculinisation surgery is a double mastectomy, ffs.

How can anyone, anyone be more concerned about what to call breastfeeding rather than focus on the reasons for having a double mastectomy, which make 'chest feeding' necessary in the first place.

I realise there is a moment where an HCP will be in this situation and need to be sensitive. And that the documentation may be written around this potential issue.

But it certainly feels like a deliberate averting of the eyes. An avoidance at all costs.

I find it incredibly difficult to express my feelings about this. I understand that breastfeeding, with gender dysphoria must be difficult.

But accommodating it by talking about chest masculinisation surgery and chest feeding feels like a teeny, tiny, minuscule sticking plaster being put on a massively, haemorrhaging wound.

I just checked Googlescholar - there are 26 articles that mention chestfeeding... all seem to be related to LGBT so at least it hasn't become the accepted term yet.

For me it was more the fact that a (presumably) reputable journal published it (unless it isn't reputable - it's out of my area and I didn't check its ranking) :(

Oh I see re Shady Pines... :)

Spartacus: I noticed that paper on 'chestfeeding' was Canadian. Canada is so far down the trans rabbit hole it's no real surprise. Bit of a stretch I know, but it seems that Canada's reputation for being a kind and compassionate sort of country is spilling over into research. Never mind the facts as long as we can all cuddle and huddle together.

yet

Shady Pines is the fictitious 'care home for retired gentlefolk'. frequently invoked by my sons when I fail to understand the youth vernacular.

I think I'm suffering from Google fatigue at the moment, so I didn't click. Bear with. I will do so now.

Is Shady Pines a euphemism for a graveyard or a nice asylum with padded walls for when you want to pound your head?

Did you see my previous post about chestfeeding? (While you are feeling despondent already).

Am I the only one who read those tumbler links and immediatly reached for the phone to book my place at Shady Pines?

Yeah - if you search www.tumblr.com/search/%22trans+in+denial%22 you'll see various iterations of that idea.

It kind of makes sense. Way back I read a list of lesbians celebs who were supposedly TM in denial. Top of the list was k.d. lang.

Back I can imagine that girls who are anything but hyper-feminine getting called out for being TM....

I don't have a link to a post like that, sorry! I don't save this stuff. In fact I don't hang out on tumblr any more because it's just a relentless struggle session and who needs it. I have personally been told I am a transman in denial so I know that happens, but I have no receipts - it was a couple of years ago. (Another tag to look on is receipts.)

Ok thanks - I don't do social media so it's all a little foreign to me.

Can you point me to what happens when someone who is a woman is called out for really being transmasculine (i.e a transman in denial?)?

Is that what you were saying happens above or should I declare my Luddite status now.

Of a callout post? Just look on tumblr. Search on things like callout or discourse. Callouts can be for anything - liking the wrong tv character, saying the wrong thing, or sexually abusing a real person are all equivalent. Fiction and reality are equivalent. There's no distinction made between thought, speech, and action.

www.tumblr.com/search/callout
www.tumblr.com/search/discourse
www.tumblr.com/search/psa+transphobia

You can see there are specific callout blogs and so on. Tumblr is notoriously difficult to search, however, as most blogs don't show up in the search results - the posts come up on your dash - so you have to get a tumblr to really get an idea of it.

Holy Motherfuck. I just did some Googling and whereas I did not find what I was looking for I did find this ... in a peer reviewed journal no less.

bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-016-0907-y

Note the use of 'chestfeeding'. It terrifies me that such terminology is actually being taken seriously.

Zoll - I don't suppose you could point to an example could you? I utterly believe you but I need to see to understand.

Oh no, you can be labelled as transmasc by other people, who then consider it their duty to out you for your hypocrisy and transphobia in claiming to be a woman. This happens. People will genuinely tell you you are a transman in denial and call you out. It's transphobic to not agree you are yourself trans if you do assigned transmac things like: visibly programming, making use of statistics or formal logic, having short hair, not wearing makeup, or wearing trousers from the mens department. This is all going on on tumblr. Obviously #notalltrans people think that or do that sort of insanity, but because of the particular way these things are enforced, the maddest infractions are dealt with the same as if you had raped someone.

What happens is someone collects screenshots of your crimes and puts them together in a Callout, which is then reblogged around the site. You are denounced as "harmful" and can be added to Callout Masterposts or Block Lists.This is literally just a list of names under headings like "known racists", "known transphobes", "known terfs", "garbage people" etc, but the screenshots don't get transferred. This is justified under the Missing Stair concept, though there's no distinction made between people who might be physically dangerous (these exist) to others and people who have committed a thoughtcrime. Sometimes these callouts and notices are reblogged over a hundred thousand times.

This is the toxic soup teens are swimming in. It's absolute crushing conformity, and it's amplified massively from anything older people ever experienced at school. Imagine the most humiliating ostracism you suffered or witnessed at high school. Now imagine that happened 100,000 times and was never over, recorded and replayed forever online. It's pretty amazing anyone ever defies this.

So, can you be labelled as transmasculine if you are a woman who is the main breadwinner, wears jeans to do the guttering at the weekend and washes the car?

I think it's an identity label rather than a description label.

Yes, I didn't mean interesting in a good way :). I thought it was banal really and a really interesting choice given the lack of criticality around the T especially given the events of the last couple of weeks.

I am reading this properly now.

So transmasculine is a woman who adopts societally recognised male behaviours and dress, whilst transman is a woman who identifies and lives as a man.

So, can you be labelled as transmasculine if you are a woman who is the main breadwinner, wears jeans to do the guttering at the weekend and washes the car? Even if you are a woman? And never question being a woman? Where does this lunacy come from? That is scary bollocks. Not only labelling one cis, but transmasculine or feminine if you don't conform to constructed ideals of gender identity.

So erasing not only biology but how women (mainly) choose to express themselves as women. I am no less a woman because I support my children financially, do my own DIY and check my car tyres etc.

Where does this lunacy come from? I mean, can someone post a reference so I can see if I have understood it right.