ITV Transformation Street

@ellaoldie I am truly sorry for the miscarriage and experiences of infertility. I kind of went through menopause during fertility treatment. Had unsuccessful treatment with donor eggs and have a birth dd and ds by adoption. Please feel free to pm me if you want to 'chat'.

I totally understand you disagreeing with me.

Sorry, my comment above was posted before I read harvs comments and Italians comment.

Please don't take it out of context in that it was not referring to those posts.

italian, you seem like a very compassionate person, but I strongly disagree that any of my actions on this thread constitute bullying.

I feel very strongly about the treatment of women's health conditions, for many reasons, and when I see transwomen throwing around these terms, I am compelled to point out that this is not OK.

Thank you for your post, harv, however I'm going to have to pick you up again on the use of "HRT". You do not take HRT. This is what women take to help ease the symptoms of menopause. I imagine that you are on some sort of hormone therapy, but not HRT. These words matter, and it's still not OK to misuse them like that. I object. I object on behalf of women everywhere who have, for hundreds of years, had men telling us how our hormones make us irrational, mad and lesser.

Can you try to understand where I'm coming from?

Yeah I'm not buying it Italiangreyhound

I absolutely know that you are coming from a good place. You seem incredibly kind. Attributes to be admired.

But there is a problem if you read what has happened on this thread in isolation.

It is such a repetitive pattern, it's not funny. It happens every single time.

So much so that, before I got to the end of the thread, when I saw harvs several posts in appreciation of their soft landing, I knew exactly where it was going to go next.

It always does. There is a particular way that men and transwomen praise women. It's cookie giving.

It's not a detailed analysis of why they approve of what you're saying.

It's patting. A reward for 'good', ie sanctioned, behaviour.

It often invokes a knee jerk appreciative response. I can't tell you how many times I have seen women using kid gloves with transwomen. Far more than they would with a woman.

The sense of security leads the transwomen into saying something controversial. Always. It's never far from the surface. You just have to wait.

Because even the nicest, most benign transwomen are operating under a delusion that by its very nature requires affirmation and validation.

As soon as that is switched off, the responses are automatic.

A huge overreaction calling women aggressive, and likening us to people who have actually pulled out their hair.

And then the complaint that we are not ladylike enough. The sarky 'LADIES', attempting to undermine women based on the reinforcement of gender stereotypes. To me, it appears almost involuntary. The product of male socialisation. The go-to insult. That not only, does not insult feminists, it merely underpins what they say.

Sorry. I know you are being nice. And I applaud you for it.

I'm just analysing the thread differently to you. Based on having seen it 100 times, albeit this being fairly mild version, from both sides.

@Datun "Your initial responses gave you a soft landing here" I was very fearful of that. That my responses woulf not be the general one! But yours was measured and I wish you could have been the first to say it, you may have got a better reply. I think if you look back you may see your response was more measured and polite and might have De- escalated things.

That's not a blame, just am observation!

@Deadlylampshade good post.

A note - it's unlikely that there are many girls on this forum. Adult human females are called "women". Many adult human females find being referred to as girls patronizing.

Even the transplantation of wombs into women seems like a massive waste of medical resources and far too risky to be worth it to me. The first case that went public was a mother who donated her womb to her daughter, and that was already questionable from an is this a good use of medical resources perspective but at least from an ethical one you can see why the mother would want to do it. Introduce the potential for profit into the equation and it's horrifying.

The risks of trying it with a male recipient are substantially greater and the likelihood of success so low that you'd think it wouldn't even be considered, but my faith in the ethics of the medical profession isn't exactly at an all time high right now.

Good morning Girls, first may I thank italiangreyhound for your generous observations and kind words, they helped me a lot.
Gender dysphoria is traditionally thought to be psychiatric condition ( mental disorder) but now there is evidence that the disease may not have origins in the brain alone, studies suggest that gender dysphoria may have a biological cause associated with the development of gender identity before birth.
I was all prepared to come back on today to face a further lambasting about my masculine attitude, and was pleasantly surprised that the tone had mellowed a little.
My comment which ignited the frosty attitudes of some who commented about my symptoms echoing a menopause was innocent enough and I accept that it was nothing like what real women experience and I regret that it upset so many of you.
HRT is something I will be taking forever 2m per day with all the risks that entails risks I gladly accept.
The womb would be created so I understand by advances in gene manipulation not by stealing one from another woman, I have donated all the organs I can after my death and strongly abhor organ trafficking as the evil it is.
the only time I mentioned the word deaf was when my original apology to you all was rebuffed as insincere which it wasn’t
I did get upset at some of the references to my “ masculinity” in your replies to things I said as I was hurt by the responses, that was only natural I guess,
I can never claim to be a biological woman and accept that as fact I was not brought up as a girl nor did I have true life experiences of puberty as a female all my early learning was that if a boy , my mental state was always in a flux over the contradictions of what my body said and what my mind said..
I would like to stay on this forum but won’t if I am causing offence
Thank you all

@AngryAttackKittens the translation of wombs is, indeed, s very disturbing development. And I say this as someone who has had masses of fertility treatment including (unsuccessfully) with donor eggs.I do have two kids one birth and one adopted and fertility journey took 12 years. So I am not unsympathetic!

I expect there might be consultation on this in the UK as there was with mitochondrial material a couple of years ago.

The only ethical position I could see is not to do it or if it is done the transplantation should only be done where doctors are already removing the womb anyway.

Sadly, once the knowledge of how to do it is successfully is known, other less scrupulous places than the UK (which is more regulated in terms of assisted conception) will climb on the band wagon.

But I hope the NHS can continue treating those who are sick, especially dire need like cancer patients and giving them the best possible chance - and not get into transplanting wombs for anyone (female or male), IMHO.

Attempts to steer women towards performing femininity by nurturing trans women who appropriate experiences that they do not actually share with us and then default to the most absurdly regressive sexist nonsense in an attempt to prevent us from pointing that out are in themselves a form of silencing, albeit a very female socialized one. As Datun pointed out, there is a pattern here, and we're not evil for noticing it.

Women are allowed to be angry, sarcastic, and otherwise unladylike. The world won't fall off its axis if women feel free to say what they're really thinking, honest.

Italiangreyhound
I disagree I'm afraid. Whatever the context claiming to have experienced menopause is an outrageous lie and an appropriation of a condition that for many women brings with it genuine physical difficulties but is also used in its societal context against women as part of their oppression.
It's as outrageous as TIMs who claim to be infertile women. It belittles the real agonies women experience.
Disclaimer : i am an infertile woman going through the peri-menopause. The time I've been most aware of being female was during my second miscarriage and I thought of Ann Boleyn and all the trillions of women who have experienced that same despair. A uniquely female experience. As is menopause. How dare men rob us of the language to describe these experiences and claim to be sharing in them.

Ps "Italian, your posts were very lovely and supportive. I'm not having any kind of dig at you, by the way"

Thank you.

@SophoclesTheFox although I agree with very many of your early post at 6.58 this morning, especially I agree with your comments 're women's biological reality. And I think we do need to make this known.

However, I think this is unfair..."But why you actually did was bowl in here, not make the slightest attempt to engage with the topic at hand, make it all about you and your suffering, type some rubbish about the massive difficulties of taking three months of hormones and a doctor telling you you were going through the menopause, frame the discussion as "aggression" and "bullying" when it didn't go in the direction that you wanted it..."

48 was engaging, talking about her own experiences, personally I doubt any woman would assume a trans woman's 'menopause' was really a menopause. But the topic of this thread is a tv show!

Trans women are allowed to talk about their owen difficulties on a thread about a programme about a clinic for trans people.

The behaviour shown by many posters was intended to shut down debate and perhaps to 'silence' the opposition. No it is not pulling hair out by the roots but maybe if that has happened to you, that is how it felt!

So it is a form if online bullying to me. I don't blame 48 for feeling that way.

It did not feel like just giving facts. I know a lot of people are really angry around this topic. But I think we should be able to discuss some aspects without the need to verbally 'squash' people.

@thebewilderness where did you get the rules of misogyny from, very interesting.

I don't think the complaint of bullying relates to the r
'Rules of misogyny'. I think it was the tirade of comments addressed to one person in that way.

It was horrible to read, adversarial and in that sense I think it's counter productive.

It's maybe impressive for some to see our strength as women (especially other women) feminists have impressed Mr so much here with their wisdom.

But for me shows of strength need something more, from females or males, like some compassion and willingness to listen as well as strength.

Our poor delicate lady brains, so easily confused
God, that poor theory doesn't even hope to make sense though, does it?

I must say, despite Harv's decline, it was a pleasure to come back and read through the rest of the thread, just to see you all being most unladylike
Although really I'm not sure how being honest and firm, with a dash of incisive anger, is all that unladylike, by any reasonable standards.

@48harv how are you doing?

Lots and lots of comments directed at only you. The trouble for me is I do understand where many of the posters were coming from (and agree) but I also feel the way you were inundated with posts directed at you was unfair and to me did feel like bullying behaviour.

I'll now get shouted down!

In fairness 48harv is posting on a thread about a tv programme about a clinic providing services to trans women and some services to trans men. So 48harv is well placed to answer things on this thread and was not barging into a female only space making statements about females.

Yes biological terns were mentioned, yes I agree calling something ths is not menopause as menopause is frustrating but I do feel the replies were over the top.

48harv, you said you liked honesty! I guess there are a lot of views on all this topic and we don't all agree with each other! But I value your input and hope this has not put you off I am still reading comments and will come back with a few questions on a minute

That's about the score of it, kittens. Bone thinning and irreversible infertility are apparently caused by the interplay between one's internal sense of gender identity and a long-lasting injectible medication. Completely plausible.

"saying that GnRH treatments for endometriosis cause side effects in women because they clash with the ladybrain"

So that's why there's a class action lawsuit against the makers of Lupron, because it made women's ladybrains all confused?

Quite so, scrumple. It doesn't matter how politely I phrased it, and how neutrally I put harv right on their facts. I disagreed, therefore I am hateful.

I'm actually laughing at the idea of three months of hormone hell. I'd have given my left ovary if the grand total of my problems with female biology had lasted three months.

No, wait! I DID give my left ovary! And the uterus. And the cervix. And my entire peritoneum. Oh, my sides such larks. Such jolly japes for all girls together.

Not three months. Three DECADES. So don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

I don't know if this one pissed me off more or less than the one earlier in the month saying that GnRH treatments for endometriosis cause side effects in women because they clash with the ladybrain, but that's is why they're effective for transwomen because they make the ladybrain align properly. It's a close call.

Tedious, isn't it? The arguing back is more for the benefit of lurkers than for Harv, who's clearly beyond any hope of reasoning with.

I knew this was going to happen as soon as Harv popped up on the thread. It always plays out the exact same way:
The whole thread was going to become all about them sharing their "unique" experiences that somehow makes them female/a woman. And because Harv was doing so from a sympathetic and understanding angle, the female socialised women here would nicely give Harv the benefit of the doubt.
And so long as the women here danced around the awkward truth (that Harv is no more a female than Eddie Izzard,) and were sympathetic and agreeable to Harv's centring of themself, Harv would remain all sweetness and light...while gradually pushing boundaries, (calling themself female, the comment about the corset, the menopause) to see how far they could get.
And as soon as women said, firmly but nicely "now come on, you know, that's not accurate," Harv predictably turned on the women they were just greasing up against for validation, and let loose with a storm of sexist anger.
It's hugely unfair to all the women on this thread who went above and beyond in their efforts to balance tact and truthfulness.
And it's so typical

Another thing that's come up before in the context of trans women claiming they have periods is that synthetic hormones can indeed have nasty side effects and if the person taking the hormones writes their symptoms off as some sort of rather vague sexist idea of "women's troubles" then the symptoms are not getting the medical attention that they probably should be. With the ones who claim they get periods, if you're experiencing sudden sharp abdominal pain and it keeps happening then maybe go see a doctor, yeah? Rather than going "oh I'm becoming a true woman now and this is my period" (causing cramping in the internal organs that you do not in fact have).

I’ve been on synthetic hormones for more than half my life, they make me depressed, bloat my stomach, I have scarring on my arm and muscle wastage, I grew an ovarian cyst, I had someone PUT A PIECE OF METAL IN MY CERVIX WHILE I WAS AWAKE, my breasts are always swollen and tender and I get bowel cramps. (All of these symptoms are totally ‘normal’ btw)

I hear you Harv synthetic hormones are awful and on that level you have my upmost sympathy and it’s a shared similar experience.
Let’s go from there rather than claiming what you had was the menopause.

"but as for my mind and my interpretation of how I stand in the community I live in I am female because most of the general public only accept male or female genders"

This is interesting in that it suggests a lack of clarity about the fact that how a person sees themselves and how others see them can be very different. Many women are too polite to tell trans women that we know they're not women in real life. It can feel unkind, and a lot of female socialization focuses on being kind and nurturing. Still, most people in this day and age are aware of the concept of trans people and therefore have a mental framework into which they can slot a person who appears male but who's dressed in a stereotypically feminine way. The fact that a person sees themselves as a woman and wear's women's clothes doesn't necessarily mean that their community thinks they were born female.

Late where I am so I'm probably not expressing this well, it just struck me that harv is assuming that subjective feelings about self = how others see harv, which is odd, especially given that with all the focus on trans in the news over the last few years you'd have to have been living under a rock not to be aware that there are some male people who want to be seen as women and who attempt to present themselves as such. Not believing in non-binary genders doesn't mean that the only options in a person's head are female person with typically feminine presentation and male person with typically male presentation.

Not everyone is as hung up on gender roles as trans people are, is what I'm getting at.

@48harv

You may not realise it, but your contribution to this thread is almost identical to every other transwoman's contribution. Not all, but most (Curry being an exception).

We are not bullying, barracking women. We are logical, rational, calm and fully convicted in our understanding of what it means to be a woman.

Your initial responses gave you a soft landing here.

I do not ever hand out creds for 'passing', but your discussion of feminism and women around the world did have me reaching
in my pocket for creds.

It's unusual for a transwoman to have any genuine affinity with women. And it was noted.

Hence your pleased reaction.

But, what generally happens, is that this kind of civilised discourse will fall apart partly because you're not a woman and don't experience what women go through. But secondly, and this always happens, transwomen will automatically bring a socialisation to the conversation, that they don't realise they have.

It's not enough that you, and we, know you didn't go through menopause, because you have no 'meno' to pause.

You have to argue the toss.

Then get offended because we don't fall in line. And start with the snarky comments and incredibly stereotypical guilt tripping.

It's so predictable. We've seen it dozens of times.

I, and many women here, have firsthand experience of menopause.

It can last 10 or more years. My aunt is 73 and still gets hot flushes, 20 years later.

My gynaecologist thought I might have to have a hysterectomy because my womb lining had pinged itself to 4 times its natural size.

Menopause is not something that men go through because they're taking artificial hormones.

To call it such just sounds a little creepy, if I'm honest. And insulting, to women for whom the menopause can mean literally decades of misery and health issues.

Don't do it.

As a previous poster instead, you would have done far better to say no, you're right, I'm sorry it's not called that. Because that shows an actual affinity with women.

Rather than an imagined one that relies on our forced collaboration.