Genderquake

It is the double speak that I find disturbing. I agree with some of tibetantripehound says - in that the older generation will end up stepping aside and allowing young people to live their lives as they wish - but we can't just do away with biology.

So, a conversation in the house last night went roughly along these lines:

T - "so are you are woman?"

C - "I identify as a woman yeah, genetically, I don't know, I don't have the surgery"

T - "well, I thought you were a woman, though"

R - "well she is a woman"

T - "No you are a woman, sorry"

C - "No, yeah, I identify as a woman"

Is making me feel like I'm going mad. So, maybe a gender revolution is happening, and we will all just have to accept the new language ("pregnant people" "menstruators" ) but somehow I feel that this is throwing women under the bus. If we can't now say "woman" and mean that this relates to our biology, to having a womb and a vagina, being XX - then it does feel like erasure.

But they do care about people's opinions of them which is why they have all the angst about "passing". If it was more acceptable to say gender is a load of nonsense you can have masculine females and feminine men and that doesn't mean you are transgender. You should be able to be the person you want to be without worrying about pronouns and appearance.
If people didn't think "she" meant girly feminine woman and "he" meant macho man then being mispronouned wouldn't be a thing as he would just mean XY and she XX and they would not be seen as personality attributes.

Predictably Twitter is full of the usual suspects spewing out the usual garbage. Do they honestly believe that repeating "transwomen are men" over and over again is going to make a jot of difference?

I really don't understand how anyone could look at those young people with such anger and hate. They're just kids ffs. And they don't give a fart if people approve of them or not.

I hope people are recognising that the violent TRA often depicted as the norm on here is a world away from the reality of young people's lives. The anti-trans ideology which has attached itself to the extremes of feminism is despicable.

Old farts - like me - need to realise that the future is not ours to create. Well done CH4. This show should prompt a lot of people to do some soul searching.

This show left me pretty unvomfortable in places.

1. Saffron is a woman. A very feminine faced woman who seems to have a lot of self esteme issues tied into her prettier twin sister. The whole nonsense about feeling different and not knowing what toilet to use everyday. You use the female one. Your female. Easy. 2)Romario is a lesbian who i agree with op. Seems to come from a background possibly where being a lesbian is not ok. Very hidden depths. Obsessed with the idea of masculinity. When i first saw him i wasnt sure if he was an effeminate gay man or a ftm trans. I dont think he passes.
2. the "lesbian" is actually a butch bisexual woman who also seems to use sexuality as her personality. Now she is attracted to someone of the male sex class she cant claim to be lesbian.
3. the issue of talking about klinefelter syndrome seemed very off to me. Someone with klinefelter syndrome is 100% male. Its a male disorder. The producers sort of implied his body is naturally part female so that was that when thats wrong.
4. the bathtub thing was strange. Women dont routinely bath together even best friends. Weird. Reminded me of the trans woman on big brother who sat around topless in company as if thats what women do.
5. the trans man was being bullied. Even before his wrong relationship with filomena (which felt like trickery) when he went into the sea they bitched and gossiped and told everyone in the house but him amd filomena. Imagine if they were talking about a trans woman.

I sympathised with Romario when he asked when you can stop being trans and just "be" the gender you want.
The problem with being trans is you can't. Because you are biologically a different gender to the one you want to be life is one long game of dressing up. Hence the ultra femininity and always worried about passing of the 2 transwomen.
I'd love to see being a feminine bloke become more acceptable, not camp as that's a different game with different rules that also seems artificial.

Yes Terf, gender reassignment prevalent in Middle East where there is death penalty for active LGBs.

Will it be repeated? It's not online yet so might need to watch as a repeat

Would be simple if we stopped conflating sex with gender.
And stuck to terms such as woman, trans women and transvestite.

I also like Saffron and found Saffron to be lovely and engaging. Why have all the bother of being 'non-binary' and the binder. Just be Saffron and like blokes or like women and be bi or gay or straight.

They did say they wouldn't be putting themselves through all this if it they didn't have to. It was almost as though they thought they were more qualified to comment upon their psyche than you are.

Does Birds Eye advertise on C4?

Asking for a friend.

LOL!!

Not that this programme would explore it, but there has to be a racial dimension to the attitudes of Romario and Filomena, and to other people’s attitudes toward them. They come out of such firmly traditionalist societies as Jamaica and the Republic of Ireland.

Yes Charlie's 'homosexual woman' bit was funny.

I also liked Brooke. I don't know enough about the intersex condition she had but I suppose to me it is confusing the way it was presented. It is a 'male' intersex condition, and I wondered what it meant for her body to 'transition'. But that was a medical interest and beyond the scope of the programme really.

I actually was surprised at who I was more drawn to! Not who I would have expected to be drawn to. I also felt that actually the differences were quite large, between the two straight non-trans people, between Campbell and Charlie (who was proud to be trans) and between the only gay male non-trans person and some of the others.

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/may/07/genderquake-review-reality-experiment-tv

"...Filomena blunders into the arena with a series of remarks about female identity that feel almost gratuitously provocative, given the company. As she states “I have a womb. Women can bring life into the world,” and the dinner table winces and splutters, it’s hard not to wonder whether her tactlessness has been poked into being by a producer with a sharp stick."

It's hard to imagine how we got a place that biological fact makes people wince and splutter. But there you go. Must get to bed.

Reminded me of Channel 4s My Big Transexual summer.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Transsexual_Summer

The transgender woman saying "I am homosexual woman.. no, I mean heterosexual woman - let's get that right!" kind of said a lot - this gender identity stuff - even the protagonists are tying themselves up in knots about it, and getting stuff wrong. So bloody confusing. How do they expect me, a woman in her 40s with 3 kids, who constantly calls them all by the wrong name - to get this right - when they don't, and have to correct themselves?!

I found Brooke very interesting as well - understanding what she meant "I sort of transitioned naturally" - she looks so feminine, said she has no difficulty 'passing' - and yet has a penis. And the problems she spoke about, that arise when dating. "when do I tell them?" I liked her a lot.

@ToeToToe you are so right. I also like Saffron and found Saffron to be lovely and engaging. Why have all the bother of being 'non-binary' and the binder. Just be Saffron and like blokes or like women and be bi or gay or straight. Saffron may not feel 'like a woman' some days but heck I never really feel 'like a woman', I am just me and I think loads of females are like that too.

The irony was that although they are all under the big 'trans umbrella' they were all very unique and their own people.

I found it surprisingly engaging. There are a lot of narcissistic people here - but, hey it's like the big brother house, so...to be expected.

Things that struck me were : Saffron - clearly, obviously, female. I felt so sad for her that their identity was tangled up with their 'pretty' sister (not even sure their sister is so much prettier than them tbh, just done up more femininely) I found myself torn between wanting to give them a hug, and wanting to say "binders!? wtf?) I went to Uni in the late 80's/early 90s, have you any idea how many androgynous women I knew? Lots doing geology/sciency stuff - All happy, all definitely female. She/they seemed so confident on BBC Breakfast - but so different in the house, where you hear her story.

(I have just been through and changed all the pronouns for Saffron - (any left are a mistake) and it seems like madness. Saffron - there is nothing wrong with being a 'her'! You can still be exactly the person you are, wear anything, present any way you like - and be a 'her').

Just watched on catchup and it was interesting.

It shows how important it is to be honest really. If you are trans that is never going to go away no matter how much you may want it to.

But if you are honest and open about it that gives people the option. Otherwise it feels like lying. When was Romario going to fess up?

I think @AngryAttackKittens is right "I assume they must screen for this when interviewing potential participants?" They probably wanted the most diverse bunch, but maybe they also wanted to allow for the chance for people to hook up because that seems to be channel four's thing! But I think their personal stories are more interesting than them on a night out etc. Taking a bath together, how many women do that? Or am I just very old!

@serfandterf101 yes, I think maybe it was a way for him to be himself and not feel the need to speak about his 'transness'. But to do it on camera on a TV programmer was really very cruel in my opinion, to the other person.

I think some of the sex thing is because they've seen how it pulls viewers in for Big Brother so the producers have orchestrated the house mate mix very carefully and cynically

Do you think Romero was testing whether or not he could attract a straight 'normal' woman? Not in a creepy predatory way but in a attempt to validate his transness as it were? Because he hasn't been as open as the others, we don't know his history or background so maybe this is all very new to him and he's experimenting?

Italiangreyhound

I think you're right and it's a shame, it gives the impression they're all just there for sex.

Would be more interesting and indicate more depth if they didn't get jiggy.