Yay! I've finally found my gender label

stig

Definition of feminism: the belief that women and men should have equal rights and opportunities.

Equal rights and opportunities do nothing to address the imbalance.

Instead of saying, “Don’t be silly, there’s no such thing as monsters!” we join in shouting, “Monsters! Everywhere! Aargh!”.

ROFL that's perfect - but yes, that rings true - mine is only 7, but there's a huge element of him pushing something and needing me to put my foot down and stop him spiralling off into overwhelmed emotion because he's not figured out how to do that for himself yet. If I were to join him in his doldrums about whatever it is now, commiserate, agree with him then he'd be lost, scared, and in real trouble mentally - rather than say that he's feeling that way, but it's not really the case, I bet if he has a biscuit and brings up his blood sugar he'll feel better about everything (he's really terrible when he's hungry!)

So, you think you're not rude because you claim to have no gender identity but then say the gender binary is a load of bollocks

Sorry, I know the thread has probably moved on but I want to respond to this. Gender is bollocks! It's a load of made up crap. It's no more real than astrology. There was a time when astrology was taken very seriously, monarchs and politicians used it to make decisions about how to run their countries, it was taught in universities, it influenced all aspects of peoples' lives. Fortunately, the Enlightenment happened and people began to realise that astrology was not real and it no longer had any influence.

Gender is no different. It's as ridiculous to say that being born with two x chromosomes means you have an inherent love of pink and baking as it is to suggest that being born on August 26th means you are a great singer*. We would not take someone seriously if they suggested the latter, so why are we giving any kind of credence to the former?!

*Disclaimer, I know nothing about astrology so that may be wrong.

-/ mix-up there, but hopefully makes sense anyway!

Prickly, isn’t that adolescent-post/adolescent rebellion supposed to be developmental stage too, though, coinciding with changes in the brain?

I meant what I said above; I think part of what is driving the mental health epidemic is because because we climb into the play pen, instead of providing some nice reassuring eye rolling. Instead of saying, “Don’t be silly, there’s no such thing as monsters!” we join in shouting, “Monsters! Everywhere! Aargh!”.

I do recognise the faddish element of the trans ideology, the need to carve an identity etc, but it's a slippery slope

As far as I can make out at least 2 of these people are natal women who like girly things. Big deal-that makes them no different from the posters in the MN style and beauty forum.

By their definition (as far as I can make any sense of the stream of conscious narcissism) I am "femme" and always have been. Again- big deal and who cares.

This whole movement reminds me of the most tedious aspect of parenting toddlers - the constant demands to play "let's pretend", which is really boring (the ability of the average toddler to sustain a let's pretend narrative which could engage the imagination of an adult is pretty low, and they constantly shift the goal posts with cries of "no, you're doing it wrong mummy...") But with toddlers, they're really cute so you put up with it, and you know it's a necessary developmental phase.

With goths, emo, punk, etc. adults not only rolled their eyes and muttered "kids today", they were expected, as adults, to roll their eyes and mutter "kids today". This gender as "sparkly special soul which fluctuates on an hourly basis between being pink and smooth shaven and blue and manly" shite is infuriating precisely because we're expected to get in the play pen with the narcissistic over-grown toddlers.

We now have people being told they ought to start work meetings by swapping pronouns, on pain of disciplinary action in the workplace. New York and Canada (a whole country gone bat-shit crazy) have legally sanctioned fines for misgendering. Instead of doing the sane thing when someone announces they want to be called "Xie and xir", which is simply say "that's nice dear" and get on with life, we're now expected to remember all these daft made up words or "face the consequences" - and these consequences can be real world ones which matter. All to validate some daft numpty's post-adolescent rebellion.

For the record, souls do not exist. There is no reality behind this supposed internal sense of gender, which can be in the wrong body or suspended somewhere between "maleness" and "femaleness" or switching between the two. It is a fiction, just like the idea of eternal souls which get reincarnated in new bodies or go to heaven (delete depending on your preferred flavour of god-bothering), or the idea that bread and wine gets turned into the body and blood of Christ when the priest says the magic words over them. There is only the material reality of our sexed bodies, and people's individual personalities.

My pronouns are "fuck", "off" and "grow up".

I do recognise the faddish element of the trans ideology, the need to carve an identity etc, but it's a slippery slope. I remember people talking about lesbians being a high school fad and how the majority were doing it because it was edgy and would grow out of it - pretty offensive stuff. These type of threads seem pretty similar in many ways and seem to have come about due to the recent GRA discussions - before this there was nowhere near as much hostility to trans people on here.

It seems to me like a genuine issue (self ID etc) which brings justifiable concern has paved the way for a lot of unjustifiable snarkery and, to be frank, outright bigotry.

Datun

Definition of feminism: the belief that women and men should have equal rights and opportunities.

Her most troubling dilemma is whether to shave her body hair or not.

I suspect many of us would be happy to lead a life where this is our most troubling dilemma.

Although it's not actually something I have a dilemma about, on account of CBA.

Speaking of puzzling, don't click on the link for the poet the last person mentions. I'm soo confused.

Yup, another trans bashing thread...

We're trying to understand a phenomenon that we find puzzling. Although these transtrenders are silly (as our parents thought that we were!), there's a serious point here. These trends coincide with a big increase in mental health problems for young people, which I don't think is entirely due to changes in diagnosis.

Is it conducive to well-being to have one's entire existence depend on the validation of one's invented pronoun? While it's fun to try on different clothes and makeup with your mates, is it conducive to well-being to spend hours each day on tumblr searching for a Special Gender Identity that fits you?

I don't have kids so I don't know. But these are significant social trends ...

Also, my prediction is that literally no one is as interested in them as they are. The delusion that strangers on the street will see a woman with short hair and glasses or a man with pigtails and gasp, “What creature is this!?” is pure teenage narcissism.

Yup, another trans bashing thread...

It isn't trans bashing. It is shaking its head in bewilderment at why these people think anyone should care about the minutiae of their lives.

StigOfThePlump

Most feminists do not seek equality. They seek liberation from a patriarchal system. Equality would be a byproduct.

If they wanted equality they would recommend that 117 million boy babies were killed before they were born, that two men a week were murder by their partners, that women committed 50 percent of sexually violent crime, that young men were murdered for marrying outside their religion, that boys’ penises were cut so they could never enjoy sex, etc. That would be equality. Eliminating those things is feminism.

cromeyellow0

I’ve read it, but I’ll have to read it again tomorrow when I’m more awake! A quick skim couldn’t determine whether it was special snowflakery extraordinaire, or some kind of subversive double bluff.

The sheer number of people who buy into all this must have a point, surely !

Did you see this one, Datun? Woman decides she's a transman, then wears make up:
www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2017/12/07/why_some_trans_men_don_t_like_makeup.html

If you see this woman in makeup and call her she, then you have committed the crime of misgendering!

This is an innovation enabling youth to overturn hierarchies of seniority: children can gain ascendancy over their parents, students over their teachers. Of course the comparison is farfetched, but there are echoes the Cultural Revolution when Red Guards were given license to attack the party cadres.

On the subject of definitions, I was pontificating earlier that MRAs could probably identify as feminists in the loose sense as they meet the criteria of wanting equality between the sexes (just that they view men as being the ones who are underprivileged).

Yup, another trans bashing thread...

cromeyellow0

I’ve read that brilliant article by Megan before. But in the light of the article in the OP, it all makes a little more sense. Some of it. A bit. I think.

It’s also very, very funny. Which is obviously the most important thing.

It was the woman saying that her identifying as femme is both subverting and celebratory of femmness.

In other words, a woman who wants to wear lipstick, but doesn’t want you to think that she’s buying into patriarchal oppression by doing so. So it’s no longer femininity, it’s ‘queering’ femme.

Me? I just like lippy.

Megan Murphy had a pleasingly rude commentary on the Guardian's version.
www.feministcurrent.com/2017/07/28/special-millennials-special-please-tell-im-special/

What's strange (to me as a middle-aged AMAB transman) is that they are so desperate for an IDENTITY, rather than just playing around with stylesas young people have done in the past half century. They insist that their identity be validated by using ridiculous pronouns. And this insistence is getting a hard legal edgein Canada and in many places in the USA, it's a crime to misgender someone.

Bloody hell, someone find me a Total Perspective Vortex to put them in.
I'm biologically a woman who thinks gender is contrived made up nonsense to tell me what I ought to like and do as a woman. Well, do you know, I'm a she with no gender, who mostly can't be arsed to wear makeup or shave all the time. I don't have deep thoughts about it . I don't understand what they're on about. God knows what made up 'gender type' they'd allocate for me.

MrsTerry
Would love to have seen you in the day.

I was feminine. Doc Martins and a beret. Thought I was as cool as fuck. .

Didn't trample over people's rights certainly

Just read a post on twitter about how he knew a certain band/thing/ whatever was cool before everyone else knew it was cool..

How I lafffffphed.