DEBATE NOT HATE: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT GENDER

christinarossetti I also agree. On a different thread a couple of us are talking about the need for teachers and parents to work together, to listen to children and to actually 'teach' and enable emotional intelligence, resilience, assertiveness, self confidence to children. It's no wonder young people are so vulnerable to the first fool who comes along telling them false news / fake facts and delusional ideas about sex and gender. We're not equipping them with the internal tools to reject fantasies and delusional thinking.

That's a very interesting and concerning article.

I especially agree with what she describes as the dangers of 'concretising' the realm of fantasy and imagination. We need to spend more time listening to children and helping them to reflect on and understand their fantasies, not immediately forcing them to be enacted.

Lisa Marchiano has also just published an excellent journal article in Psychological Perspectives -

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00332925.2017.1350804#.WdfQ3Bw_1hs.twitter

Great article TheWeeWitch Thanks for sharing it.

It is a sign of the times that I heard the start of a charity TV advert today (I was in the next room so couldn't see the screen) that went "I was born a girl" and I immediately thought it was going to be a trans thing. It was of course for a charity supporting girls in countries where they don't go to school and get married off at 9. oppression because of their biological sex which we all know doesn't happen and biology is irrelevant
I bet those girls wish they could identify out of being girls/women

It's so utterly batshit.

Nailed.

I'm kind of interested in exactly why any attempt to express women's perspectives and experiences is experienced by many in the trans community as an attack.

Is it because within a patriarchal society, men tend to shout women down as soon as they open their mouths? Or is it because their position is so theoretically weak and nonsensical and dissolves as soon as it comes a into contact with reality that can't reply sensibly?

Or are some of the trans community so utterly self-absorbed that they can't think beyond their own dogma?

Or a mix? I continue to be surprised at how quickly any attempt to say, 'hang on minute, you've skipped a step in that argument', is shot down with cries of transphobia, TERF or 'cis priviledge'

It's so utterly batshit.

I completely agree. Gentle fluidity and non-binary completely undermines the premise that you just know you're the opposite sex. And they both reinforce gender stereotypes. Plus these people just look ridiculous and attention seeking. Trying to make something significant out of regular personality traits.

That's why I don't understand why the transgender lobby wants to include non-binary.

Unless it's so they can be a woman on a Saturday night and go back to being a man at work on Monday morning.

Neatly blurring the lines between gender fluidity, non-binary, and a part-time cross dresser.

I imagine a fair few people seeing that grew up in the 70s and 80s, and are struggling to see how a person who looks pretty much like they did as teenagers can be expressing some kind of ever-so-special 'gender'. It looks like just another youth subculture, and that is most certainly not what the self-identification brigade want. So, on reflection, I'm not surprised that many of them don't want to be associated with that person.

The majority of the comments are against this nonsense..thats a pleasant surprise.

Thing is, if everyone thought about it properly, near everyone is 'non-binary' so the term is just kind of pointless. And definitely not a reason to use a fake penis to use urinals..wtf.

I imagine they don't like anything that shows the general public the logical (?) conclusion of their push towards self-identification.

Some very amusing comments there. And she uses a prosthetic penis to urinate in men's urinals when she identifies as male...????

I mean- are we taking this seriously now?

It's more like heresy in religion- anything other than total acceptance is seen as transphobia and shouted down.

Agreed. Along with a side order of possibly losing your job, being virtually burned at the stake online and getting punched in the face by someone who planned an evening fucking up terfs.

Its occurred to me before that history will probably look back on it much like we look back on the Pendle and Salem Witch Trials, which were the 'thing' of their time involving a lot of hysteria, teenagers and terror to not follow the batshit narrative. I wish the government would look at this in the context of escalating child mental health and anxiety crises and increasing rates of diagnosis of autism, and the appalling lack of help and resources, not to mention a lack of investigation into why we're raising a generation of children, particularly girls, who are so desperately unhappy.

Not the twitter response I would have expected from Pink News readers on Pierce Morgan's guest:

twitter.com/PinkNews/status/917368562641141761

It seems to me that a large part of the problem is the difficulty in being able to discuss it.

I was actually thinking this as I got dressed- in a NON BINARY style- this morning. Through all my long life involved with activism, I have never known a subject which it is FORBIDDEN to discuss. It's more like heresy in religion- anything other than total acceptance is seen as transphobia and shouted down.

My nana used to say "I'm glad I'm leaving this world not just coming into it....."

I have to say I am coming to see what she meant :)

I do like 'Tabitha said that she had no problem with Piers wanting to identify as an elephant.'

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4961910/Good-Morning-Britain-Piers-gender-fluid-guest.html#

Born to a trans father - how confusing for everyone concerned.

Posted to soon.

It's baffling that his is how the tide is turning. I worry for my dd and my dd. Whatever next. God, I sound just like my granny saying that

I haven't posted on this topic despite using MN for a while.

I saw this on tv this morning. Sorry for the daily fail link. www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4961910/Good-Morning-Britain-Piers-gender-fluid-guest.html

I was so shocked at the attitude. Does his mean if I wear a mans outfit and pencil on a goatee I can go into the men's loos at a restaurant or in a gym?

That's a really good article, TheWeeWitch, and in a peer-reviewed academic journal too.

There were so many very good points made. I'd seen the suicidal tendencies claim before, of course, but not this remark:

"It is well known that one study showed that 41% of transgender people had experienced suicidal ideation or self-harm (Haas, Rodgers, & Herman, 2014). It is less well known that the study gives no indication whether the attempt was before or after receiving transition care. ...Given the undeniably high rates of suicide in post-transition transsexuals, it is disingenuous to claim that transition is a panacea that will prevent suicide."

It's just so saddening to read the statements from detransitioned women:

"Transition didn't help. It did harm, harm that I now have to learn how to live with on top of all the shit I thought transition would fix....I did this [double mastectomy] because I believed it would heal all of the emotional issues I was blaming on my female body. It didn't work. Now I'm still all fucked up and I'm missing body parts, too."

It seems to me that a large part of the problem is the difficulty in being able to discuss it.

Imvhe, every single time a women tries to articulate the view that they are pro-women's rights, not 'anti trans' they're shouted down with name calling, or 'no platformed', or have comments deleted as 'hate speech'.

It seems that there's a proportion of the trans right movement that experience any attempt by women to express their perspectives as some sort of an attack, so feel the need to shut it down rather than receive and reflect on it.

Which tends to be what happen to womens' voices within patriarchal social relations.

Meanwhile, fgm, domestic abuse, human trafficking, denied abortions, not to mention pay inequalities etc continue, whilst we're expected to run around trying not to speak 'hate speak' by using the pronoun that the person doesn't want to be addressed by that day.

When 'no means no' is seen as an repressive and oppressive ( see toilet issue above described by Claire), we are not in a good place

There's a Twitter thread with trans people expressing their objections to Salman Rushdie's view twitter.com/transscribe/status/916676416749625344

Salman Rushdie issues gender reassignment surgery warning to 'young people'

The British author focuses on the subject of gender identity in his new novel:

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/salman-rushdie-gender-reassignment-warning-the-golden-houses-transgender-transitioning-a7988006.html?amp

Lisa Marchiano has also just published an excellent journal article in Psychological Perspectives -

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00332925.2017.1350804#.WdfQ3Bw_1hs.twitter

We really need to call them to account on the woolly definition and point out how cross dressing is a recognised sexual fetish and in the DSM 5.